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MAINTENANCE  REQUIRED 


Nina  Horisaki-Christens 
Andrea  Neustein 
Victoria  Rogers 
Jason  Waite 


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INTRODUCTION  i 

ESSAYS 

Maintaining  Development:  Redefining  the  Relationship  8 
Victoria  Rogers 

Maintenance,  Renewal,  Decay,  Death,  Air,  Time,  Dust,  22 
and  the  Gallery 
Andrea  Neustein 

Maintenance  and  Dependency  3  8 
Nina  Horisaki-Christens 

The  House  of  Invisible  Cards  5  2 
Jason  Waite 

ARTISTS 

Michael  Bramwell  66 

Goldin+Senneby  70 

Ashley  Hunt  74 

Masaru  Iwai  78 

Yve  Laris  Cohen  82 

Sam  Lewitt  86 

Park  McArthur  90 

Salvage  Art  Institute  94 

Karin  Sander  98 

Taryn  Simon  102 

Pilvi  Takala  106 

Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles  no 

MANIFESTO  FOR  MAINTENANCE  ART,  1969!  1 1 8 
PROPOSAL  FOR  AN  EXHIBITION,  "CARE" 

Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles 

WORKS  IN  THE  EXHIBITION  124 

IMAGE  CREDITS  128 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS  130 


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INTRODUCTION 


After  the  revolution,  who's  going  to  pick  up  the  garbage  on  Monday  morning? 

MlERLE  LADERMAN  UkELES, 

"Manifesto  for  Maintenance  Art,  1969:" 


"Maintenance  is  the  work  which  allows  for  all  other  work,"  the  ever- 
present  but  simultaneously  unseen  and  undervalued  activity  that  sus- 
tains our  infrastructure,  our  society,  and  our  lives.1  Often  repetitive  and 
mundane,  this  work  maintains  the  objects,  structures,  and  institutions 
that  undergird  our  constant  struggle  against  entropy  and  decay.  Thus 
maintenance  takes  form  not  only  through  labor,  but  also  through  the 
entire  system  of  individuals,  objects,  and  infrastructures  that  construct 
our  daily  lives.  Durational  by  nature,  maintenance  networks  provide 
life-sustaining  mechanisms  of  care.  But  by  the  same  token,  these  sys- 
tems may  direct  and  limit  life's  possibilities,  or  even  become  malevo- 
lent systems  of  control.  By  dismantling  our  collective  blindness  toward 
maintenance  activities,  we  can  begin  to  examine  how  they  condition 
our  lives.  Bringing  maintenance  into  view  exposes  a  constantly  shifting 
set  of  social,  political,  and  affective  relations  and  invites  questions  about 
what  needs  to  be  maintained  and  under  what  conditions  that  mainten- 
ance occurs. 

Large-scale  systems  of  maintenance  often  seem  "characterized 
by  perfect  order,  completeness,  immanence  and  internal  homogene- 
ity rather  than  leaky,  partial  and  heterogeneous  entities."2  We  tend  to 
imagine  ourselves  and  the  world  surrounding  us  as  smoothlv  running 
machines  rather  than  as  a  series  of  jerry-rigged  contraptions  in  need  of 


constant  problem-solving  and  repair.  The  "cultures  of  normalized  and 
taken-fbr-granted  infrastructure"  allow  us  to  overlook  the  constant  work 
being  performed  on  the  networks  upon  which  we  depend,  the  activi- 
ties that  are  omnipresent  throughout  the  day  and  continuing  through 
the  night.3  Maintenance  is  all  around  us,  in  plain  sight  but  unacknowl- 
edged— manifest  in  the  form  of  delivery  trucks,  caregivers,  police, 
telecommunication  cross-connect  boxes,  electricity  cables,  and  water 
mains.  Maintenance  Required  examines  artistic  practices  that  frame  and 
critically  engage  these  invisible  systems  of  life  support,  practices  that 
articulate  the  paradoxical  tensions  of  large-scale  systems  of  maintenance 
whose  power  to  sustain  life  may  also  entail  the  power  to  constrain  it. 

A  key  text  in  the  struggle  to  make  maintenance  visible  is  the 
"Manifesto  for  Maintenance  Art"  (1969),  in  which  Mierle  Laderman 
Ukeles  redefines  maintenance  activities  as  art.  Referring  to  the  quotid- 
ian, repetitive,  and  frequently  domestic  chores  that  make  up  a  sizable 
portion  of  her  everyday  life,  Ukeles  recontextualizes  her  daily  house- 
keeping tasks  as  artwork,  claiming  "my  working  will  be  the  work."4 
With  this  statement  Ukeles  redefines  the  process  of  maintenance  as 
art,  grafting  the  value  systems  associated  with  "high  art"  onto  the  daily 
activities  associated  with  maintenance.  In  this  transformation,  Ukeles 
adopts  strategies  familiar  to  emerging  conceptual  and  performance 
practices  of  the  time  that  aimed  to  redefine  the  boundaries  of  art  and 
society.  Like  other  artists,  Ukeles  claims  a  space  for  the  everyday  within 
art,  but  she  takes  this  logic  a  step  further  by  focusing  on  some  of  the 
most  devalued  and  routine  aspects  of  daily  life.  As  her  practice  pro- 
gressed, Ukeles  broadened  her  focus  to  systemic  mechanisms  of  main- 
tenance, becoming  the  unsalaried  artist-in-residence  at  the  New  York 
City  Department  of  Sanitation  in  1977,  a  position  she  has  held  for  the 
last  thirty-six  years  and  which  may  be  viewed  as  a  durational  action  in 
itself.  Through  her  work,  we  first  begin  not  only  to  see  but  also  to  value 
maintenance  as  a  vital,  beneficent  force. 

Yet  systems  of  maintenance  also  involve  both  precariousness  and 
control.  The  issue  of  control  is  embedded  in  the  etymological  root  of 
maintenance:  the  Latin  phrase  manu  tenere  means  "to  hold  in  hand." 
It  is  the  grip  of  the  maintenance  hand,  so  to  speak,  that  sustains  order. 
This  grip  is  outlined  in  "Postscript  on  the  Societies  of  Control,"  in 
which  Gilles  Delueze  develops  the  Foucauldian  notion  of  a  disciplinary 


INTRODUCTION 


-'•.•  -,    .•?•.-  ;■'•'■,•  ..    ■  '         ■'.■■' 

society  to  analyze  the  new  mechanisms  infused  into  maintenance  by  late 
capitalism,  particularly  competition,  continuous  training  in  the  work- 
place, never-ending  regimes  of  education,  and  the  destabilizing  effects 
of  financialization.5  Taking  Delueze  further,  we  argue  that  the  large- 
scale  systems  that  maintain  society  are  themselves  precarious,  a  fact  that 
has  become  ever  more  evident  as  they  grapple  with  economic  crises, 
austerity,  the  intensified  decoupling  of  financial  markets  from  material 
production,  shifts  toward  service-based  economies,  and  the  accelerated 
velocity  of  information.  Returning  to  the  etymology  of  maintenance, 
a  hand  cannot  hold  on  to  something  indefinitely,  and  there  may  be  an 
emancipatory  potential  in  loosening  its  grasp.  The  social  order  that  is 
maintained  through  economic,  social,  and  political  systems  continues 
only  because  we  wake  up  every  morning  and  reproduce  it.  Here  the 
capacity  for  radical  change  is  ostensibly  hindered  by  the  need  to  pro- 
vide repeatedly  the  basic  necessities  of  society,  as  hinted  at  in  the  epi- 
graph above.  However,  as  recent  revolutions  and  uprisings  have  shown, 
political  and  social  transformation  can  be  accompanied  by  new  forms  of 
self-organization  of  services,  further  destabilizing  the  notion  that  the 
existing  order  of  society  must  be  maintained.  What  would  it  mean  to 
take  Ukeles's  question  about  post-revolutionary  garbage  collection  at 
face  value,  and  see  it  not  as  a  cynical  dismissal  of  the  ineffectiveness  of 
revolutions,  but  as  an  invitation  to  revolutionize  maintenance? 

The  varied  practices  included  in  this  exhibition  address  some  of  the 
problems  around  maintenance,  among  them  the  contested  visibility 
of  maintenance  workers  and  the  class  inequities  that  complicate  their 
status,  the  interests  at  work  within  the  systems  that  create  and  sustain 
value,  and  the  increasingly  apparent  vulnerabilities  of  physical  infra- 
structures. The  task  of  deferring  entropy  takes  on  a  new  significance  in 
the  age  of  the  planned  obsolescence  of  the  object.  In  this  situation,  repair 
and  reuse  may  produce  their  own  forms  resistance.  By  articulating  the 
disjuncture  between  dependency  and  control  implicit  within  mainten- 
ance structures,  this  exhibition  asks:  What  needs  to  be  maintained? 
Who  determines  what  will  be  maintained?  And  under  what  conditions 
are  these  maintenance  cycles  kept  in  motion? 


INTRODUCTION 


I  I 


IV 


Notes 

i  Helen  Molesworth,  "Work  Stoppages:  Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles'  Theory 
of  Labor  Value,"  Documents  10,  Fall  1997, 19. 

2  Stephen  Graham  and  Nigel  Thrift,  "Out  of  Order:  Understanding 
Repair  and  Maintenance,"  Theory,  Culture  &  Society  24,  no.  3,  May  2007,  10; 
available  online  at  http://tcs.sagepub.eom/cgi/content/abstract/24/3/1. 

3  Ibid. 

4  Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  "Manifesto  for  Maintenance  Art,  1969! 
Proposal  for  an  Exhibition,  'Care'"  (1969),  reproduced  in  this  catalogue,  pp. 
118-121;  originally  published  in  excerpted  form  in  Jack  Burnham,  "Problems 
of  Criticism,"  Artforum,  January  1971,  41;  reprinted  in  excerpted  form  in 
Idea  Art,  ed.  Gregory  Battcock  (New  York:  Dutton,  1973);  and  Six  Years:  The 
Dematerialization  of  the  Art  Object  from  1966  to  igj2  .  .  .  ,  ed.  Lucy  R.  Lippard 
(New  York:  Prager,  1973),  220-21. 

5  Gilles  Deleuze,  "Postscript  on  the  Societies  of  Control,"  October  59, 
Winter  1992,  3-7. 


INTRODUCTION 


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Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  Interviewing  Passersby  on  the  Side-walk  about  Their  Maintenance 
Lives,  1973-74.  Outside  A.I.R.  Gallery,  New  York.  Part  of  the  Maintenance  Art 
Performance  series 


MAINTAINING 
DEVELOPMENT: 
REDEFINING  THE 
RELATIONSHIP 


Victoria  Rogers 


Two  basic  systems:  Development  and  Maintenance.  The  sourball 
of  every  revolution:  after  the  revolution,  who's  going 
to  pick  up  the  garbage  on  Monday  morning? 

Development:  pure  individual  creation;  the  new;  change; 
progress;  advance;  excitement;  flight  or  fleeing. 

Maintenance:  keep  the  dust  off  the  pure  individual 

creation;  preserve  the  new;  sustain  the  change; 

protect  progress;  defend  and  prolong  the  advance; 

renew  the  excitement;  repeat  the  flight; 

show  your  work — show  it  again 

keep  the  contemporaryartmuseum  groovy 

keep  the  home  fires  burning 

Development  systems  are  partial  feedback  systems  with  major  room  for  change. 
Maintenance  systems  are  direct  feedback  systems  with  little  room  for  alteration. 

MlERLE  LADERMAN  UkELES, 

"Manifesto  for  Maintenance  Art,  19691" 


In  2011,  Judith  Butler  examined  the  political  movements  that  have 
reclaimed  public  spaces  across  the  world  over  the  past  few  years.  Of 
Tahrir  Square  during  the  Egyptian  revolution,  Butler  writes,  "a  certain 


■Mr*  •  "    *•?** 


sociability  was  established  within  the  square,  a  division  of  labor  that 
broke  down  gender  difference,  that  involved  rotating  who  would  speak 
and  who  would  clean  the  areas  where  people  slept  and  ate,  develop- 
ing a  work  schedule  for  everyone  to  maintain  the  environment  and  to 
clean  the  toilets."1  Similar  maintenance  routines  took  place  in  Zuccotti 
Park,  where  the  occupiers  used  self-directed  maintenance  to  thwart 
attempts  to  disperse  them.  Maintenance  of  the  park  became  a  political 
act,  a  direct  response  to  Mayor  Bloomberg's  initial  declaration  that  the 
park  would  be  shut  down,  supposedly  temporarily,  while  "the  property 
was  cleaned  in  stages."2  Fearing  the  cleaning  was  a  pretext  for  evict- 
ing the  demonstrators,  Occupy  Wall  Street  announced  via  Twitter  that 
they  would  clean  the  space  themselves,  asking  supporters  to  gather  and 
defend  against  eviction,  soliciting  cleaning  supplies,  and  forming  work 
teams  and  cleaning  brigades.3 

Rooted  in  the  practice  of  "occupation"  and  sustained  by  the  physi- 
cal gathering  of  people,  Occupy  Wall  Street  took  its  meaning  from, 
and  found  success  in,  the  inhabitation  of  space.  Occupy 's  influence  was 
dependent  in  part  on  maintaining  a  physical  presence,  and  therefore 
on  systems  of  upkeep  that  dealt  with  a  major  consequence  of  bodily 
occupation:  the  accumulation  of  waste.  Though  less  visible — and  less 
heralded — the  elaborate  system  of  physical  maintenance  (sweeping 
and  mopping  brigades,  shifts  of  people  emptying  trash  receptacles) 
that  developed  at  Zuccotti  Park  sustained  Occupy  Wall  Street.  These 
moments  of  contemporary  political  action  demonstrate  that  mainten- 
ance activity  needs  to  be  rethought  not  only  as  a  support  for  collec- 
tive action,  but  as  potentially  revolutionary  in  its  own  right.  As  Butler 
shows,  maintenance  is  an  inherent  part  of  political  action  and  a  means 
through  which  to  sustain  occupation. 

Decades  before  Occupy  Wall  Street,  Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles  wrote 
"Manifesto  for  Maintenance  Art,"  a  document  in  which  she  challenged 
modernist  concepts  of  artistic  practice  by  emphasizing  what  these  con- 
cepts excluded:  the  role  of  maintenance  in  art.4  Reacting  against  the 
traditional  role  of  the  artist  as  an  autonomous  maker  of  unique,  aestheti- 
cized  objects,  Ukeles  decided  that  she  no  longer  wanted  to  understand 
her  art  practice  in  terms  of  production^  In  modernist  aesthetics,  pro- 
duction is  linked  to  artistic  development,  seen  by  Ukeles  in  the  work  of 
Marcel  Duchamp  and  Jackson  Pollock,  who  are  examples  of  "the  artist- 

IO  VICTORIA  ROGERS 


genius  [who]  never  repeats  (him)self."6  Contrary  to  the  avant-garde's 
injunction  to  "make  it  new,"  Ukeles  encourages  viewers  to  "maintain 
it!"7  In  her  manifesto,  Ukeles  defines  maintenance  and  development 
as  simultaneously  oppositional  and  dependent.  Development  encom- 
passes that  which  is  new  and  in  constant  flux;  maintenance  is  the  drab 
but  necessary  work  that  is  rarely  acknowledged.  While  development  is 
characterized  by  evolution  and  change,  maintenance  is  repetitive  and 
circular.  Development  is  primary,  while  maintenance  is  secondary  and 
derivative.  The  predictability  of  maintenance  systems  precludes  them 
from  initiating  change  and  progress. 

Yet  Ukeles  begins  to  question  the  opposition  between  development 
and  maintenance  when  she  asks,  "after  the  revolution,  who's  going  to 
pick  up  the  garbage  on  Monday  morning?"  Her  "revolution"  is  presum- 
ably equated  with  development,  while  maintenance  encompasses  the 
work  that  takes  place  before  and  after  it.  Does  this  thinking  suggest 
that  revolutions  are  without  effect,  only  lasting  until  someone  comes 
along  to  restore  the  old  order — to  sweep  them  away  and  "pick  up  the 
garbage"  left  behind?  Or  does  Ukeles's  question  imply  that  revolutions 
are  not  sustainable  without  some  element  of  menial  "clean-up" — that 
the  initial  flash  of  a  novel  concept  is  for  naught  without  a  system  that 
implements  and  supports  this  concept?  Must  the  progressive  elements 
of  revolutionary  concepts  or  events  themselves  be  maintained  through 
laborious  physical  action?  Whose  role  is  it  to  "maintain"  this  progress? 

These  questions  highlight  a  central  tension  in  Ukeles's  extended 
career.  Initially  in  her  manifesto,  and  ultimately  through  her  practice, 
Ukeles  dismantles  the  strict  divide  between  maintenance  and  devel- 
opment, preferring  instead  a  feedback  system  between  the  two.  She 
suggests  that  while  maintenance  systems  derive  their  relevance  from 
development  systems,  the  opposite  is  equally  true.  By  lifting  mainten- 
ance up  as  a  life-sustaining  practice  in  its  own  right,  Ukeles's  work  does 
away  with  the  traditional  hierarchical  relationship  that  privileges  devel- 
opment over  maintenance,  which  is  historically  also  a  gendered  divide. 
During  Washing/Tracks/Maintenance:  Outside  (1973),  performed  at  the 
Wadsworth  Atheneum,  Ukeles  washed  the  front  steps  of  the  museum 
with  the  same  cloth  diapers  the  museum's  curators  used  to  clean  works 
of  art.  Her  labor  blurred  the  line  between  private  space  (coded  femi- 
nine) and  public  space  (coded  masculine),  drawing  out  domestic  house- 


MAINTAINING  DEVELOPMENT 


work  for  public  viewing.8  Traditionally,  women  have  been  consigned  to 
activities  of  maintenance  and  reproduction  in  the  home,  while  men  have 
controlled  the  space  beyond  the  home,  the  realm  of  labor  and  produc- 
tion, with  the  exception  of  men  who  work  professionally  in  maintenance 
jobs. 

By  focusing  her  own  work  on  maintenance  activity,  Ukeles  delineates 
the  rough  contours  of  a  conceptual  framework  in  which  maintenance 
is  valued  above  development,  though  the  pair  operate  reciprocally.  For 
Ukeles,  maintenance  is  the  work  that  enables  and  makes  development 
possible,  and  she  attempts  to  reveal  the  importance  of  maintenance 
through  works  such  as  the  Maintenance  Art  Questionnaire  (1976).  Ukeles 
initially  developed  the  questionnaire  for  a  performance  in  the  exhibition 
space  at  55  Water  Street,  at  the  time  managed  by  the  Whitney  Museum 
of  American  Art,  in  which  she  asked  members  of  the  viewing  public 
to  answer  a  series  of  questions  about  their  own  maintenance  activity, 
including  what  they  do  to  survive.  By  equating  maintenance  with  sur- 
vival, Ukeles  privileges  maintenance  over  other  kinds  of  activities  and 
redefines  the  relationship  between  maintenance  and  development  alto- 
gether. Her  reversal  disrupts  the  economy  of  the  initially  hierarchical 
binary  opposition  between  development  and  maintenance,  simultane- 
ously complicating  both  terms.9 

The  questionnaire  calls  attention  to  both  the  centrality  and  ubiquity 
of  maintenance  acts,  values  typically  attributed  to  development  systems. 
The  questionnaire,  which  subsequently  traveled  across  the  country, 
operated  as  a  type  of  equalizer,  demonstrating  the  necessity  of  main- 
tenance acts  across  varied  populations,  from  artists  to  city  planners  to 
maintenance  professionals.  Recently,  Ukeles  updated  the  questionnaire 
for  Maintenance/Survival  and  its  Relation  to  Freedom:  You  and  the  City 
(2013)  at  the  Brooklyn  Museum,  focusing  her  questions  on  the  series  of 
maintenance  systems  (both  individual  and  municipal)  that  developed  in 
response  to  Hurricane  Sandy.10  At  a  point  of  breakage  in  social  systems 
like  that  introduced  by  the  hurricane,  the  importance  of  maintenance 
systems  comes  into  clear  view. 

Ukeles  challenges  the  way  in  which  existing  systems  make  invisible 
both  waste  and  the  workers  who  dispose  of  it,  but  less  often  does  she 
question  what  systems  are  maintained  and  why.  Is  Ukeles's  exposure  of 
maintenance  systems,  as  a  political  act  in  itself,  enough?  Does  she  just 


VICTORIA  ROGERS 


bring  maintenance  to  light  in  an  attempt  to  change  how  viewers  value 
the  practice,  or  does  her  work  alter  the  concept  of  maintenance  itself, 
which  in  her  own  practice  includes  corporeal  acts  of  cleaning,  wash- 
ing, and  caring?  By  drawing  attention  to  maintenance  work,  Ukeles 
places  the  onus  on  the  viewer  to  pick  up  where  she  leaves  off,  question- 
ing to  what  degree  observers  can  separate  themselves  from  maintenance 
systems. 

Some  more  recent  practices  further  rupture  the  hierarchy  of  main- 
tenance and  development  by  challenging  the  relationship  between  the 
two  in  new  and  varied  contexts.  Michael  Bramwell  and  Pilvi  Takala 
offer  insights  into  the  revolutionary  potential  of  Ukeles's  work  on  main- 
tenance through  their  respective  practices,  each  partly  founded  on  cor- 
poreal systems  of  maintenance.  Acting  as  a  janitor  in  Harlem,  Bramwell 
approaches  maintenance  as  a  manual,  intensive  task  of  physical  labor, 
while  Takala,  interning  at  a  Helsinki  consulting  group,  treats  mainten- 
ance as  a  largely  contemplative,  intellectual  exercise. 

Bramwell  focuses  on  revaluing  communities  and  monuments  by 
caring  for  public  space.  During  Building  Sweeps  (1995-96),  Bramwell 
scoured  Harlem  for  the  most  derelict  space  to  clean,  using  character- 
istics such  as  drug  activity,  graffiti,  and  smell  as  measures  of  decay." 
Dressed  in  janitorial  garb,  Bramwell  swept,  tidied,  and  washed  the 
common  spaces  of  his  chosen  tenement  buildings,  which  the  acting 
superintendents  had  neglected.  Building  Sweeps  is  a  work  of  opposition, 
inherently  critical  of  the  dysfunctional  existing  system.  Bramwell  took 
action  by  stepping  in  on  an  individual  level  once  the  system  of  upkeep 
had  broken  down.  Maintenance  here  has  the  power  to  transform,  incit- 
ing a  type  of  progress  of  its  own  by  eventually  stimulating  residents  to 
advocate  for  themselves. 

Bramwell  mirrors  Ukeles's  investment  in  community:  the  occupants 
of  his  Harlem  tenement  buildings  operate  within  a  specific  commu- 
nity much  like  the  sanitation  workers  that  Ukeles  met  during  Touch 
Sanitation  (1979-80),  a  project  in  which  she  shook  hands  with  and 
thanked  the  city's  approximately  8,500  sanitation  workers.  Both  artists 
embed  themselves  in  social  groups:  Ukeles  became  the  unsalaried  artist- 
in-residence  at  the  New  York  City  Department  of  Sanitation  in  1977,  a 
post  she  still  holds  today,  while  Bramwell  returned  to  the  same  Harlem 
tenement  week  after  week  until  drug  dealers  succeeded  in  driving  him 

MAINTAINING  DEVELOPMENT  13 


Michael  Bramwell,  Ground 'Zero  Sweeps  I— II:  Collaborative  Sweep,  Hiroshima,  1996.  Inkjet 
print,  11  x  14  in.  (28  x  35.6  cm) 


H 


VICTORIA  ROGERS 


'    .  C    -•    ;.'•<•> 
out.  They  each  partake  in  the  physical  labor  of  cleaning  and  their  sus- 
tained involvement  points  to  the  repetitive  nature  of  maintenance  itself. 

The  marginalization  of  each  of  these  communities  is  an  entry  point 
for  both  of  the  artists.  Bramwell  came  to  work  in  Harlem's  African- 
American  community  shortly  after  the  height  of  the  crack  epidemic, 
which  both  tore  the  community  apart  and  strengthened  the  ties  between 
its  surviving  members.'2  Bramwell's  presence  also  drew  attention  to  the 
frequency  with  which  African-Americans  occupy  these  types  of  posi- 
tions: an  African-American  male  performing  a  janitorial  task  is  hardly 
unexpected.  The  son  of  a  Bronx  building  superintendent,  Bramwell's 
relation  to  the  maintenance  act  runs  deep.  Like  Bramwell's  Harlem 
neighborhood,  the  community  of  sanitation  workers  with  whom 
Ukeles  worked  was  also  isolated,  as  employees  of  the  city  treated  with 
less  respect  than  their  peers  of  police  officers  and  firefighters.  In  1968, 
7,000  sanitation  workers  went  on  strike,  reacting  to  their  difference  in 
compensation  (in  size  of  both  paychecks  and  pensions)  from  other  city 
workers.13  Ukeles's  connection  to  New  York's  sanitation  workers  was 
first  made  through  her  own  domestic  maintenance.  Ukeles  drew  paral- 
lels between  her  labor  (caring  for  her  children,  cleaning,  cooking,  wash- 
ing) and  theirs.  As  Ukeles's  practice  developed,  her  work  widened  from 
a  focus  on  the  home  and  private  forms  of  self-maintenance  to  encompass 
the  gallery  or  museum  space  and  finally  the  maintenance  of  a  city  in  its 
entirety. 

Though  invested  in  the  communities  in  which  they  worked,  both 
Bramwell  and  Ukeles  came  to  them  as  artist  outsiders.  While  Bramwell 
emphasizes  the  potentially  active  role  of  the  community,  Ukeles  privi- 
leges the  position  of  the  artist  as  agitator,  whether  by  performing  the 
acts  of  maintenance  herself  or  miming  the  maintenance  work  of  others. 
Works  such  as  Touch  Sanitation  revalue  the  status  of  maintenance  work- 
ers and  their  labor.  In  contrast,  Building  Sweeps  employs  maintenance 
work  as  a  means  to  a  larger  end,  in  hopes  that  Bramwell's  activity  will 
take  the  community  to  task  and  inspire  residents  to  alter  their  environ- 
ment. According  to  one  journalist,  Bramwell's  project  pushed  the  resi- 
dents to  act,  "baiting  the  super  [to  clean]  like  a  trapped  rat."'4  For  Ukeles, 
maintenance  is  enabling  in  a  literal  sense;  the  labor  of  maintenance 
workers  creates  tangible  change  by  ridding  the  city,  home,  or  commer- 


MAINTAINING  DEVELOPMENT  15 


cial  space  of  garbage  and  dirt.  Bramwell  however  focuses  less  on  those 
providing  maintenance  than  on  those  affected  by  maintenance  work;  he 
wants  to  leave  the  tenement's  inhabitants  with  a  sense  of  agency.  While 
Ukeles  ultimately  maintains  control  over  her  work,  Bramwell  privileges 
the  community  in  which  he  is  working,  ultimately  leaving  it  to  others 
to  pick  up  where  he  left  off.  Bramwell's  broom  sweeps  signify  tangible, 
sustainable  change,  intimating  progress  to  come,  progress  that  in  turn 
must  be  maintained  by  the  community. 

In  Harlem,  maintenance  work  extends  beyond  the  physical  structure 
of  the  tenement  building — Bramwell's  act  of  caring  for  the  building 
alters  the  sense  of  worth  the  occupants  had  of  themselves.  In  Bramwell's 
practice,  maintenance  and  development  converge,  as  maintenance  pro- 
vides the  ground  on  which  development  sustains  itself.  By  emphasiz- 
ing the  impact  of  maintaining  existing  physical  structures,  Bramwell 
deemphasizes  redevelopment,  a  possible  act  of  destruction  of  existing 
systems  caused  by  real  estate  speculation.  Gentrification  often  involves 
the  intentional  "redlining"  of  neighborhoods:  strategic  disinvestment  in 
existing  communities  that  allows  them  to  decay  and  depopulate,  with 
the  effect  that  buildings  later  can  be  purchased  cheaply,  rehabilitated, 
and  sold  for  profit  to  other  groups.  In  Bramwell's  work,  maintenance — 
rather  than  development — is  used  to  incite  progress  and  encourage 
Harlem  residents  to  call  for  change  in  their  own  communities,  for 
themselves.  Bramwell's  take  on  the  act  of  maintenance  resonates  with 
Ukeles's  manifesto:  his  impact  is  progressive.  Instead  of  attempting 
to  impose  radical  change  or  to  develop  social  programs  for  the  urban 
ghetto,  Bramwell  simply  cleaned,  drawing  attention  to  the  power  of 
maintenance  systems  and  the  social  consequences  of  their  breakdown. 

While  Bramwell's  labor  is  physical,  Pilvi  Takala's  labor  is  decidedly 
more  white  collar.  Like  Ukeles  and  Bramwell,  Takala  enters  into  a  com- 
munity as  an  outsider,  yet  she  uses  her  exterior  position  to  critique  the 
group  rather  than  to  lift  it  up.  Working  under  the  guise  of  a  trainee 
in  the  marketing  department  at  Deloitte  consulting  and  business  ser- 
vices in  Helsinki  in  The  Trainee  (2008),  Takala  challenges  the  corporate 
structure  of  human  development.  During  her  monthlong  "training," 
Takala  either  appears  not  to  be  working,  or  pursues  a  series  of  banal 
tasks  and  "busywork,"  both  of  which  are  readily  noticed  by  her  cowork- 
ers, of  whom  only  a  few  know  her  real  project.  In  time-lapse  videos,  the 

16  VICTORIA  ROGERS 


Pilvi  Takala,  The  Trainee,  2008.  Installation  with  letter,  key  card,  PowerPoint  presenta- 
tion, office  furniture,  video;  dimensions  variable.  Still  from  video 


MAINTAINING  DEVELOPMENT 


17 


artist  is  shown  partaking  in  various  common  office  situations:  sitting  in 
a  cubicle,  riding  the  elevator  up  and  down  the  building,  and  photocopy- 
ing. When  colleagues  question  her  activity,  or  lack  thereof,  she  replies 
with  some  form  of  the  phrase  "I'm  working,"  claiming  her  intellectual 
labor  as  office  work.  In  so  doing,  Takala  subverts  traditional  demands  of 
workplace  production,  neglecting  to  pair  her  intellectual  work  with  the 
requisite  patterns  of  paper-pushing  and  computer  activity  to  which  her 
coworkers  are  accustomed.  Takala  introduces  a  break  into  the  workflow 
at  Deloitte  and  challenges  viewers  to  question  the  systems  on  display 
there.  As  her  colleagues  grow  increasingly  frustrated  with  her  apparent 
inactivity,  they  are  powerless  to  do  anything  to  stop  her.  The  Trainee 
uncovers  the  daily  work  of  keeping  operations  and  technology  systems 
moving  and  simultaneously  questions  whether  these  systems  are  as  effi- 
cient as  they  seem.  Takala  extends  Ukeles's  practice  by  using  mainten- 
ance activity  as  a  form  of  commentary  on  the  corporate  workplace,  and 
expands  beyond  Ukeles's  purview  by  calling  attention  to  maintenance 
practices  in  the  business-services  sector. 

Takala's  work  tangibly  demonstrates  the  repetitive  labor  of  mainten- 
ance that  Ukeles  articulates  in  her  manifesto.  In  Takala's  videos,  the 
passage  of  time  becomes  the  subject  in  addition  to  the  artist  herself. 
While  Bramwell's  sweeps  emphasize  the  care  inherent  to  mainten- 
ance, Takala  emphasizes  repetition  and  duration.  In  one  of  the  series 
of  time-lapse  videos  that  comprise  The  Trainee,  Takala  is  shown  let- 
ting time  pass  without  a  computer  on  her  desk — what  she  refers  to  in 
the  video,  February  25,  a  Day  at  Consulting  (2008),  as  thinking  "without 
the  machine,"  while  her  coworkers  buzz  around  her,  enacting  progress 
throughout  the  office.  Takala's  maintenance  is  that  of  the  mind.  Her 
lack  of  production  increasingly  agitates  her  colleagues,  who  write  email 
to  one  another  and  suggestively  give  Takala  computer-based  assign- 
ments to  complete. 

The  visualization  of  maintenance  in  The  Trainee  is  twofold:  Takala 
engages  in  intellectual  maintenance  and  critiques  her  colleagues  who 
partake  in  a  system  of  workplace  maintenance.  The  videos  provoke 
questions  about  the  materiality  of  that  difference.  While  Takala  seems 
to  be  refusing  to  produce  or  refusing  to  develop,  her  colleagues  seem 
to  be  miming  development,  more  concerned  with  Takala's  inactivity 
and  chatting  with  one  another  than  anything  else,  posing  as  if  they  are 

18  VICTORIA  ROGERS 


making  progress  in  the  workplace.  Her  coworkers  are  participants  in 
a  constant  system  of  corporate  maintenance,  filling  a  series  of  cyclical 
roles  at  Deloitte.  The  repetitive  nature  of  the  larger  corporate  system  in 
which  these  employees  operate  is  hidden  beneath  the  constant  shuffling 
of  paper  and  clicking  of  computer  keys,  recalling  the  embarrassment  or 
shame  Ukeles  often  cites  as  synonymous  with  maintenance  systems,  the 
work  that  "no  one  will  talk  about."'5  The  Trainee  draws  out  systems  of 
maintenance  that  are  disguised  as  systems  of  development.  Her  cowork- 
ers mask  their  maintenance  activities  under  the  claim  of  development, 
relying  on  symbols  of  office  productivity,  such  as  computer  operations 
and  brief  discussions  with  colleagues,  to  validate  their  work.  In  one  of 
the  films,  a  coworker  chats  with  another,  an  act  seemingly  no  more  eco- 
nomically productive  than  Takala's  mental  labor. 

Bramwell  and  Takala  draw  out  the  relationship  between  mainten- 
ance and  development  which  Ukeles  brings  to  light,  further  challeng- 
ing a  simple  binary  and  extending  it  to  new  communities  and  beyond 
purely  physical  labor.  They  recontextualize  Ukeles's  maintenance  prac- 
tice within  contemporary  issues  of  shared  public  space  and  modern 
office  culture  while  building  on  core  components  of  Ukeles's  work: 
drawing  attention  to  undervalued,  unacknowledged,  and  excluded 
types  of  physical  and  intellectual  maintenance.  Bramwell  and  Takala 
each  also  demonstrate  how  maintenance  systems  can  alter  society.  As 
Butler  shows,  acts  of  maintenance  straddle  the  line  between  public  and 
private  space  and  support  the  capacity  of  bodies  to  collectively  call  for 
change.  Maintenance  is  usually  associated  with  the  status  quo,  but  as 
Butler,  Occupy  Wall  Street,  and  Ukeles  all  attest,  it  is  already  part  of 
a  political  process  that  distributes  power  and  labor  in  certain  ways.  By 
highlighting  both  the  physical  maintenance  needed  to  occupy  space  and 
the  psychological  maintenance  needed  to  sustain  a  movement,  they  each 
point  to  the  essential  role  maintenance  plays  in  political  processes  and 
even  in  revolution  itself. 


MAINTAINING  DEVELOPMENT  19 


Notes 

i  Judith  Butler,  "Bodies  in  Alliance  and  the  Politics  of  the  Street,"  in 
Sensible  Politics:  The  Visual  Culture  of  Nongovernmental  Activism,  ed.  Meg 
McLagan  and  Yates  McKee  (New  York:  Zone  Books,  2012),  128. 

2  David  Chen,  "Protesters  Told  to  Vacate  Park,  for  Its  Cleaning,"  New 
York  Times,  October  12,  2011,  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/13/nyregion/ 
protesters-told-they-will-have-to-leave-zuccotti-park-temporarily.html. 

3  See  "Emergency  Call  to  Action:  Keep  Bloomberg  and  Kelly  from 
Evicting  #OWS,"  Occupy  Wall  Street  website,  October  13,  2011,  http:// 
occupywallst.org/article/emergency-call-action-prevent-forcible-closure- 
occ/;  and  Anemona  Hartocollis,  "Facing  Eviction,  Protesters  Begin  Park 
Cleanup,"  New  York  Times,  October  13,  2011,  http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes 
.com/2011/10/13/told-to-leave-protesters-talk-pre-emptive-strategy/.  When  the 
Zuccotti  occupation  was  forcibly  evicted  in  the  middle  of  the  night  the  fol- 
lowing month,  the  Bloomberg  administration  continued  to  justify  clearing 
the  park  with  the  rhetoric  of  cleaning,  "restoring,"  health,  and  safety.  See  Al 
Baker  and  Joseph  Goldstein,  "After  an  Earlier  Misstep,  a  Minutely  Planned 
Raid,"  New  York  Times,  November  15,  2011,  http://www.nytimes.com/ 
20ii/n/i6/nyregion/police-clear-zuccotti-park-with-show-of-force-bright- 
lights-and-loudspeakers.html;  and  James  Barron  and  Colin  Moynihan,  "City 
Reopens  Park  after  Protesters  Are  Evicted,"  New  York  Times,  November 
15,  2011,  http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/16/nyregion/police-begin-clearing- 
zuccotti-park-of-protesters.html. 

4  Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  "Manifesto  for  Maintenance  Art,  1969! 
Proposal  for  an  Exhibition,  'Care'"  (1969),  reproduced  in  this  volume,  pp. 
118— 121. 

5  Ukeles's  manifesto  challenges  a  traditional  Kantian  definition  of  artistic 
practice.  In  the  Critique  of  Judgment,  Immanuel  Kant  advances  a  definition  of 
artistic  production  that  continues  to  have  traction  today.  For  Kant,  beauty  in 
art  depends  on  an  object  produced  by  genius.  The  object's  beauty  rests  primarily 
on  its  originality  and  secondarily  on  its  worth  for  emulation.  Immanuel  Kant, 
Critique  of  Judgment  (Mineola,  New  York:  Dover,  2005),  sec.  46,  113. 

6  Sherry  Buckberrough  and  Andrea  Miller-Keller,  Mierle  Laderman 
Ukeles:  Matrix  ijj  (exhibition  catalogue)  (Hartford,  CT:  Wadsworth 
Atheneum,  1998),  2. 

7  Samantha  C.  Earl,  "The  Tilted  Trajectory  of  Public  Art:  New  York  City 
1979-2005"  (MA  thesis,  Massachusetts  Institute  of  Technology,  2011),  56. 

8  Helen  Molesworth,  "House  Work  and  Art  Work,"  October  92,  Spring 
2000,  78. 

9  In  a  discussion  of  binary  oppositions,  Jacques  Derrida  refers  to  the 
"interval  between  inversion,  which  brings  low  what  was  high,  and  the  irruptive 
emergence  of  a  new  'concept.'"  In  other  words,  the  reversal  of  a  hierarchical 
opposition  is  not  limited  to  making  the  formerly  dominant  term  secondary, 

20  VICTORIA  ROGERS 


but  can  instead  create  an  altogether  new  relationship  between  the  two  terms. 
Jacques  Derrida,  "Positions,"  in  Positions,  trans.  Alan  Bass  (Chicago:  University 
of  Chicago  Press,  1982),  42. 

10  See  Michael  H.  Miller,  "Trash  Talk:  The  Department  of  Sanitation's 
Artist  in  Residence  Is  a  Real  Survivor,"  GalleristNY,  January  15,  2013,  http:// 
galleristny.com/2013/01/trash-talk-the-department-of-sanitations-artist-in- 
residence-is-a-real-survivor/. 

11  Andrea  Hamilton,  "Artist  Sweeps  Hallway  in  an  Effort  to  Cleanse 
Spirits,"  Daily  News,  September  22,  1995,  2-B. 

12  Timothy  Williams,  "Mixed  Feelings  as  Change  Overtakes  125th  St.," 
New  York  Times,  June  13,  2008. 

13  H.  Lanier  Hickman,  American  Alchemy:  The  History  of  Solid  Waste 
Management  in  the  United  States  (Santa  Barbara:  Forester  Press,  2003),  520. 

14  Hamilton. 

15  Miller. 


MAINTAINING  DEVELOPMENT  21 


Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  Transfer:  The  Maintenance  of  the  Art  Object,  1973.  Performance 
view,  c.  7,500,  Wadsworth  Atheneum,  Hartford,  CT,  July  20,  1973.  Part  of  the 
Maintenance  Art  Performance  series 


MAINTENANCE,  RENEWAL, 
DECAY,  DEATH,  AIR,  TIME, 
DUST,  AND  THE  GALLERY 


Andrea  Neustein 


I.  Interpretation  Is  Maintenance 

Art  handling,  preservation,  and  restoration  are  a  few  of  the  various 
forms  of  work  that  comprise  the  maintenance  of  art.  ("Art"  here  can 
refer  both  to  the  field  as  a  whole,  as  well  as  to  a  single  artwork  or  multi- 
ple artworks).  Other  instruments  of  art  maintenance  include  the  varied 
frameworks  that  surround  art:  exhibition  spaces  and  galleries,  econo- 
mies in  which  art  circulates,  intellectual  property  law,  social  art-events, 
online  art  image-aggregators  and  blogs,  the  so-called  art  world,  and  the 
art  exhibition.  The  interpretation  of  art — specifically,  the  work  done  by 
curators  and  arguably  to  a  decreasing  extent  by  critics  and  also  view- 
ers— can  also  maintain  art.  These  physical  spaces,  discourses,  roles,  and 
tasks  all  serve  their  own  maintenance  functions,  while  being  themselves 
continually  maintained,  an  issue  to  which  I'll  return  later.  Let's  accept 
for  the  moment  that  the  curator  is  a  maintenance  worker,  laboring  in 
service  of  the  continued  existence  of  art. 


II.  The  Violence  of  Interpretation  (Change) 

The  idea  that  interpretation  maintains  art,  and  that  curating  and  criti- 
cism are  therefore  maintenance  practices,  may  seem  to  suggest  that 
interpretation  is  essential  to  the  continued  existence  of  meaning  in  art. 
In  fact,  quite  the  opposite  is  true. 


23 


ff1'  .*t"    . 


In  Karin  Sander's  Wallpiece  series  (1994-ongoing),  the  artist  moistens 
and  burnishes  bare  gallery  walls  until  their  bright  surfaces  are  perfectly 
smooth  and  glossy.  Masaru  Iwai  similarly  mobilizes  the  instruments 
of  interior  or  domestic  maintenance — household  cleaners — to  burnish, 
scrub,  and  sand  interior  surfaces  of  exhibition  spaces  until  the  varnish 
on  wood  floors  has  cracked  and  walls  have  been  reduced  to  powder. 
The  outcomes  of  each  artist's  actions  are  nearly  opposite:  in  Sander's 
case,  the  wall  itself  becomes  an  aestheticized  object  for  viewing,  while 
in  Iwai's  case  the  space  is  destroyed.  Yet  both  practices  demonstrate  the 
tendency  of  maintenance  work  to  change  the  nature  of  the  objects  and 
systems  upon  which  it  acts. 

Perhaps  interpretation  does  to  art  what  Iwai  does  to  the  wooden 
floor:  works  it  and  works  it  until  its  basic  qualities  have  been  unrecog- 
nizably, irreparably  altered. 

In  this  way,  like  any  act  of  love,  maintenance  is  both  a  violent  and 
affectionate  act. 

But  I  am  getting  ahead  of  myself.  We  should  start  with  Duchamp. 

III.  Dust  Breeding — To  Be  Respected 

Dust  Breeding  was  perhaps  the  first  artwork  to  engage  self-consciously 
with  questions  of  art  maintenance.  In  1920,  Man  Ray  photographed 
the  surface  of  Marcel  Duchamp's  Large  Glass,  which  Duchamp  had 
set  on  sawhorses  next  to  his  studio  window  with  a  sign  on  the  wall 
that  read,  "Dust  Breeding.  To  be  respected."1  The  work  had  collected  a 
thick  layer  of  dust  that  in  the  photograph  appears  almost  topographi- 
cal. Both  the  studio  installation  and  the  photograph  of  Dust  Breeding 
raise  several  key  points:  Duchamp  introduces  the  lazy  artist,  the  artist 
who  refuses  to  work,  and  hence  a  poetics  of  refusal.2  This  refusal  in  turn 
points  to  its  opposite:  the  labor-intensive  work,  and  thus  the  artwork 's 
identity  not  as  a  sublime  object,  but  as  a  fallible  thing  that  needs  to 
be  consciously  and  consistently  maintained  by  human  labor  in  order  to 
survive.  Dust  Breeding,  then,  is  an  important  precursor  to  the  work  of 
Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  who  nearly  fifty  years  later  explicitly  proposes 
"maintenance  art"  in  her  1969  manifesto.'  In  Transfer:  Maintenance  of  an 
Art  Object  (1973),  one  of  Ukeles's  four  famous  "maintenance  activities" 
performed  at  the  Wadsworth  Atheneum  in  1973,  the  artist  called  her 

24  ANDREA  NEUSTEIN 


Marcel  Duchamp  and  Man  Ray,  Dust  Breeding,  1920,  printed  c.  1967.  Gelatin  silver  print, 
9  7/16  x  12  in.  (23.9  x  30.4  cm) 


-** 


MAINTENANCE  AND  THE  GALLERY 


25 


act  of  dusting  a  vitrine  that  holds  a  female  mummy  a  "dust  painting." 
Helen  Molesworth  points  out  that  in  this  single  act  of  cleaning,  Ukeles 
conflates  three  jobs  into  one:  that  of  the  janitor,  who  was  responsible  for 
cleaning  the  vitrine  up  until  Ulceles's  action;  that  of  the  artist;  and  that 
of  the  professional  art  worker,  in  this  case  the  conservator,  whose  ser- 
vices have  to  be  enlisted  once  the  vitrine's  status  is  publically  "elevated" 
by  the  artist  from  display  environment  to  art  object.4 

Similarly,  Dust  Breeding  can  be  seen  as  the  first  artwork  that  pro- 
poses maintenance  work — or  the  refusal  to  enact  maintenance — as  a 
specifically  artistic  proposition  and  realm  of  concern,  "to  be  respected." 
As  Molesworth  acknowledges,  Duchamp's  making  of  Dust  Breeding 
precludes  him  from  making  any  progress  on  the  Large  Glass,  which  is 
temporarily  repurposed  as  the  breeding  ground.5  Molesworth  calls  this 
Duchamp's  "insurgency"  against  his  role  of  artist-as-worker,  but  it  is 
a  passive  insurgency,  more  like  a  strike  with  no  negotiable  terms.6  By 
declining  to  work  on  the  art  object  and  shifting  the  viewer's  focus  from 
the  work  of  genius  to  the  record  of  idleness,  Duchamp  and  Man  Ray 
stage  both  refusal  and  refuse. 

If  we  are  to  relate  Dust  Breeding  to  interpretation  considered  as  an 
entropic  force,  it  might  be  helpful  to  take  a  look  at  Duchamp's  own  ideas 
about  art  and  interpretation.  In  a  1959  interview  with  Calvin  Tompkins, 
Duchamp  says: 

There  is  nothing  that  has  eternal  value  ....  The  poor  Mona  Lisa  is 
gone  because  no  matter  howwonderful  her  smile  maybe,  it's  been 
looked  at  so  much  that  the  smile  has  disappeared.  I  believe  that 
when  a  million  people  look  at  a  painting,  they  change  the  thing 
by  looking  alone.  Physically.  See  what  I  mean?  They  change  the 
physical  image  without  knowing  it.  There  is  an  action,  transcen- 
dental of  course,  that  absolutely  destroys  whatever  you  could  see 
when  it  was  alive  ....  [It  deteriorates.  Sometimes  it's  an  embel- 
lishment ....  But  I  will  go  further  and  say  that  there  is  a  physical 
action  of  the  onlookers.  The  onlooker  is  part  of  the  making  of  the 
painting  but  also  exerts  a  diabolical  influence  by  looking  alone. 

Duchamp  goes  on  to  say  that  looking  can  also  revive  an  artwork  (El 
Greco's  paintings,  coming  back  into  vogue  at  the  time  of  the  interview, 
are  cited  as  an  example),  but  that  after  too  much  looking  the  work  will  go 
dormant  again.  Given  Duchamp's  ideas  about  the  cyclical  life  and  death 
of  the  artwork  in  relation  to  looking,  the  dust  in  Dust  Breeding  might 

26  ANDREA  NEUSTEIN 


even  function  allegorically.  With  interpretation,  the  artwork  is  revived 
but  already  begins  to  be  irreparably  changed  to  the  point  that  its  former 
meaning  is  destroyed  by  new  meanings;  it  "deteriorates."  Without  inter- 
pretation, the  work  may  survive;  it  is  not  destroyed,  but  it  lies  dormant 
(under  a  growing  layer  of  dust)  and  loses  its  vitality — until  it  is  revived 
again.  Besides  pointing  out  the  viewer's  power  to  destroy  the  artwork 
simply  by  looking,  it  is  relevant  that  in  Dust  Breeding  Duchamp  grants 
the  dust  if  not  agency  then  at  least  some  kind  of  animism.  The  dust,  too, 
acts  upon  the  artwork. 

As  Robert  Barry  wrote  in  Art  Work  (1970),  a  conceptual  art  piece 
from  his  Meta-Concepts  series,  "Knowing  of  it  changes  it." 

IV.  Hans  Haacke 

Maintenance  is  renewal,  or  perhaps  a  covert  or  unwitting  act  of  creation. 
Maybe  decay  and  death  too  provide  a  pathway  for  an  object  to  come  into 
its  full  power — perhaps  the  afterlife  of  an  object  takes  precedence  over 
its  life.  Take,  for  example,  Hans  Haacke 's  Germania  (1993),  in  which  the 
artist  famously  tore  up  the  white  marble  floors  of  the  German  pavilion 
at  the  Venice  Biennale,  which  had  been  constructed  in  1909  but  altered 
in  1938  under  the  Third  Reich.  Haacke 's  act  is  the  proactive,  accelerated 
iteration  of  Duchamp's  Large  Glass,  upon  which  time  acts  organically. 

I  asked  Haacke  in  a  casual  conversation:  did  you  sell  the  rubble?  Did 
anyone  keep  it? 

"I  don't  know  if  anyone  kept  it.  To  sell  it  would  have  been  absurd," 
Haacke  said. 

The  act  of  breaking  up  the  floor  may  perform  its  intended  function: 
that  is  to  say,  Haacke 's  act  may  contest  the  pavilion's  symbolic  power. 
Haacke  is  clearly  aware  that  this  act  of  breakage  transforms  the  floor 
into  a  spectacle  of  a  destroyed  regime.  Still,  Haacke  unwittingly  rec- 
ognizes the  floor  in  this  act  of  principled  destruction.  The  floor's  sym- 
bolic power  is  elevated  through  its  negation,  in  the  Hegelian  sense  of 
Aufhebung  or  sublation.  If  a  contractor  had  decided  a  cement  floor  would 
be  aesthetically  preferable,  or  an  engineer  had  removed  it  for  reasons  of 
leveling,  then  maybe  the  floor  would  truly  be  destroyed.  However,  by 
rendering  the  act  of  its  destruction  visible  as  an  artwork,  Haacke  fixes 
the  floor's  symbolic  power  for  posterity.  This  is  particularly  true  now 

MAINTENANCE  AND  THE  GALLERY  27 


in  a  way  that  Haacke  could  not  have  anticipated  in  1993:  any  online 
search  of  the  work's  title  serves  up  hundreds  of  images  of  the  broken 
monument  as  a  decontextualized  icon.  Although  its  image  survives,  in 
fairness  Haacke  expressed  no  desire  to  preserve  the  physical  floor  for 
posterity  as  an  artwork  after  the  close  of  the  Biennale. 

At  the  same  Biennale,  Ilya  Kabakov  and  Emilia  Kabakov's  Red 
Pavilion  similarly  critiqued  the  history  of  the  political  bodies  represented 
by  the  architectural  structure  in  which  they  worked.  The  Kabakovs  uti- 
lized the  passive  language  of  refusal,  requesting  that  the  maintenance 
staff  on  the  Biennale  grounds  refrain  from  restoring  the  pavilion  build- 
ing in  the  months  and  days  leading  up  to  the  fair,  as  was  the  usual 
preparatory  process.  The  Russian  pavilion  has  an  open  archway  as  its 
entrance  and  the  interior  had  been  filled  with  haphazardly  stored  lum- 
ber and  detritus  that  had  accumulated  a  thick  layer  of  dust  and  cobwebs 
since  the  Biennale  had  closed  two  years  earlier.  Rather  than  a  David- 
and-Goliath  iconography — the  unlikely  heroic  gesture — the  Kabakovs 
expressed  their  critique  by  just  not  cleaning  up. 

So:  it's  no  big  news  at  this  point  that  looking  and  interpreting  changes 
the  thing  itself,  the  artwork,  or  perhaps  destroys  it.  But  then  how  can 
interpretation  be  considered  maintenance?  Doesn't  maintenance  in  its 
essence  mean  to  keep  things  as  they  are  in  the  present,  to  maintain  the 
status  quo,  deriving  as  it  does  from  the  Latin  manu  tenere,  to  hold  in 
hand? 


V.The  Heisenberg  Principle  of  Maintenance;  Time  in  Relation  to 
Decay  and  Death 

All  maintenance  changes  the  thing  itself.  Holding  something  in  hand 
is  to  have  already  lifted  away,  to  have  removed,  to  have  changed. 
Interpretation  is  not  the  exception  to  this  rule. 

Does  valuing  maintenance,  as  proposed  by  Ukeles,  imply  that  the 
status  quo  should  be  maintained?  The  question  involves  a  confusion  of 
tenses.  Maintenance  does  not  maintain  a  thing  as  it  is  in  the  present.  It 
seeks  to  restore  a  thing  to  the  way  it  was  in  the  past.  Take  the  example  of 
the  glass  vitrine.  The  vitrine  becomes  dusty  and  promises  to  get  dustier. 
The  maintenance  worker  sprays  it  with  glass  cleaner  and  wipes  the  dust 
off.  To  actually  maintain  the  vitrine  as  the  worker  finds  it  in  the  pres- 


*'"    •    .28  .v       v.---.    .  ■  V-.  .  „■■"  •    ANDREA  NEUSTEIN 


ent  would  be  to  allow  the  dust  to  sit,  like  Duchamp  did.  Instead,  the 
worker  seeks  to  return  the  vitrine  to  its  previous  state.  Why?  What  the 
worker  is  in  fact  maintaining  is  not  the  present  of  the  vitrine  (what  is 
held  in  hand),  but  the  past  of  the  vitrine.  In  other  words,  the  worker 
maintains  the  ideal  or  purpose  of  the  vitrine.  Why  does  the  vitrine 
exist?  The  worker  argues,  through  the  glass  cleaner,  that  the  vitrine 
exists  in  order  that  the  viewer  can  look  at  an  object  protected  within 
it.  Maintenance  actors  argue  through  their  actions  for  the  purpose 
of  the  thing  they  are  maintaining.  Does  cleaning  necessarily  require 
Platonism?  In  the  case  of  the  vitrine,  the  object's  purpose  as  a  display 
environment  whose  transparency  is  paramount  to  its  performance  is  not 
particularly  contentious — until  Ukeles  appears  and  declares  its  cleaning 
an  artwork  and  that  it  is  to  be  cleaned  only  by  a  conservator  from  then 
on.  Cleaning  the  object,  as  uncontroversial  as  it  may  be,  still  argues  for 
the  ideal  of  the  object  upon  which  maintenance  acts  and  the  conditions 
it  seeks  to  maintain  or  create.  In  short,  yes,  maintenance  requires  a  cer- 
tain Platonism. 

The  status  quo  as  we  experience  it  involves  perpetual  decay.  The  real- 
ity of  the  status  quo  is  not  absolutely  static  but  includes  constant  entropy 
and  ongoing  breakdown;  this  decay  is  met  with  repeated  repairs,  in  a 
seemingly  desperate  pretense  of  integrity  or  immortality.  Maintenance 
seeks  to  "fix"  in  both  senses  of  the  word:  to  repair,  and  to  fasten  securely. 
Since  this  is  impossible,  however,  the  maintainer  unwittingly  seizes 
upon  select  elements  of  that  which  is  maintained  to  the  exclusion  of 
others,  maintaining  those  elements  vigorously,  potentially  overworking 
them  to  a  grotesque  degree. 

Maintenance  is  guerilla  warfare  against  the  status  quo.  By  obscur- 
ing the  constant  cycle  of  breakdown  and  upkeep,  maintenance  creates 
a  pretense  of  consistency  and  proffers  the  pristine  and  new  as  the  status 
quo.  In  her  "Manifesto  for  Maintenance  Art,"  Ukeles  defiantly  names 
"maintenance  art"  and  claims  as  an  artist  her  right  to  perform  house- 
work, child  care,  hygiene,  and  later,  sanitation  work,  garbage  collec- 
tion, and  any  act  of  public  or  private  upkeep,  as  art.  The  manifesto  is 
an  argument  for  visibility,  both  of  the  maintenance  worker  and  of  the 
woman-artist's  dual  and,  Ukeles  felt  at  the  time,  opposite  roles  as  main- 
tainer and  creator.  In  the  manifesto,  Ukeles  categorizes  maintenance  as 


MAINTENANCE  AND  THE  GALLERY  29 


part  of  "the  Life  Instinct."  An  individualized  framework  and  a  push  for 
progress  characterize  the  death  instinct;  the  life  instinct,  in  contrast,  is 
a  push  for  unification  and  equilibrium — the  imperative  is  to  "preserve 
the  new."7  By  staging  upkeep,  Ukeles  showcases  a  world  of  perpetual 
decay  and  suggests  a  role  for  people  in  constantly  renewing  that  world. 
The  word  renew  suggests  repetition  {re-,  "again,  anew,"  or  a  movement 
backwards)  but  also  suggests  invention  {new),  implying  a  pure  creation. 
How  can  something  be  new,  again?  Renewal  differs  from  the  cheer- 
ful conjecture  that  a  recently  cleaned  object  is  "like  new";  instead,  the 
renewed  object  is  new. 

VI.  Death  and  the  Curator;  Space  =  Time 

Ploughed  fields  depict  figures  of  duration  every  bit  as  clearly  as  figures  of 
space;  they  show  us  the  rhythm  of  human  toil. 

Gaston  Bachelard,  The  Dialectic  of  Duration 

Space,  like  time,  gives  birth  to  forgetfulness,  but  does  so  by  removing  an 
individual  from  all  relationships  and  placing  him  in  a  free  and  pristine  state. 
Time,  they  say,  is  the  water  from  the  river  Lethe,  but  alien  air  is  a  similar 
drink;  and  if  its  effects  are  less  profound,  it  works  all  the  more  quickly. 

Thomas  Mann,  Magic  Mountain 

If  the  banality  of  ongoing  breakdown  is  to  be  expected,  then  mainten- 
ance is  interference  and  an  insistence  on  a  desired  status  quo.  If,  further, 
maintenance  can  be  an  unwitting  way  of  making,  in  an  almost  appropri- 
ative  capacity,  then  it  can  also  be  a  covert  way  of  changing:  an  invention 
of  fixed  history  disguised  as  the  ongoing  present,  criticality  that  looks 
like  affirmation,  the  cable  guy  running  wire,  the  cellphone  hack.8  In  a 
basic  way,  if  maintenance  is  the  struggle  against  decay,  it  must  implic- 
itly attempt  to  work  against  death,  as  Ukeles  hints  in  the  discussion 
of  "the  Life  Instinct"  in  her  manifesto.  Acknowledging  maintenance 
accepts  that  it  takes  work  to  remain  alive,  that  time  inevitably  undoes 
our  maintenance  labor,  that  our  continued  existence  is  conditional  and 
relies  upon  our  own  and  others'  work,  and  that  our  comfort  is  contin- 
gent on  the  invisibility  of  that  work. 


30  ANDREA  NEUSTEIN 


What  does  the  invisible  struggle  against  death  and  time  have  to  do 
with  the  art  maintenance  worker:  the  curator,  the  viewer,  the  critic,  the 
art  handler,  or  the  preservationist?  According  to  Bachelard  and  Mann, 
space  can  somehow  function  or  act  upon  us  in  a  manner  analogous  to 
time,  and  our  perception  of  space  can  even  represent  time  and  affect  our 
experience  of  its  passage  or  stagnation.  If  this  is  the  case,  both  space 
and  time  may  be  successfully  manipulated  or,  within  limits,  controlled. 
Henri-Pierre  Roche  said  that  Duchamp's  finest  work  was  his  use  of 
time.  Perhaps,  then,  the  curator  and  other  maintenance  workers  are 
more  than  clever  morticians. 

The  art  worker's  relationship  with  space  may  be  analogous  to  the 
maintenance  worker's  relationship  with  time.  The  space  of  the  exhi- 
bition is  meant  to  be  nonporous,  climate-controlled,  timeless:  a  haven 
for  the  protection  of  art.  As  Miwon  Kwon  acknowledges  in  her  essay 
on  Ukeles  and  the  maintenance  of  the  exhibition  space,  these  charac- 
teristics "are  foundational  to  the  institution's  self-definition  and  self- 
justification.""  Of  course,  at  this  art-historical  moment,  we  as  viewers 
have  already  accepted  that  when  sanctioned  by  an  artist  or  even  a  certain 
kind  of  curator,  a  delineated  interaction  with  the  space  is  permissible 
and  that  the  space  is  subject  to  interrogation.  A  delicate  acknowledg- 
ment of  one's  surroundings  is  met  with  recognition  and  approval.  After 
the  exhibition,  however,  the  space  is  expected  to  "resume"  its  pristine 
state:  invisible  workers  putty  and  paint  the  holes  in  the  wall,  sweep  up 
the  installation,  pack  the  artworks,  remove  the  projector,  and  reinstall 
the  lights.  The  space  goes  blank,  so  it  can  again  be  endowed  with  the 
character  of  one  author  or  another.  The  gallery  represents  an  unusu- 
ally explicit  embodiment  of  the  maintenance  ideal,  the  realized  fiction 
of  static  space  and  time.  Sander's  Wallpiece  relies  on  and  disturbs  our 
expectations  of  a  "neutral"  exhibition  space,  simply  by  continuing  the 
usually  unnoticeable  maintenance  work  on  our  surroundings  until  its 
effects  aestheticize  the  very  blankness  that  we  take  as  a  given.  (You  want 
a  sanded  wall?  Here  is  your  precious  sanded  wall). 

Accepted  wisdom  has  it  that  the  curator-as-art-worker  maintains  the 
hallowed  symbolic  neutrality  of  the  exhibition  space,  in  order  that  art 
situated  within  it  may  be  viewed  in  an  optimal  fashion.  Within  this 
model,  Boris  Groys,  echoing  Duchamp,  posits  that  "the  work  of  art  is 


MAINTENANCE  AND  THE  GALLERY  31 


sick,  helpless;  in  order  to  see  it  viewers  must  be  brought  to  it  as  visitors 
are  brought  to  a  bed-ridden  patient  by  hospital  staff.  It  is  no  coincidence 
that  the  word  'curator'  is  etymologically  related  to  'cure':  to  curate  is  to 
cure."  To  cure  the  space  is  to  cure  the  artwork,  then.  Groys  continues, 
however,  that  curating  functions  "like  a  pharmakon  in  the  Derridean 
sense:  it  both  cures  the  image  and  further  contributes  to  its  illness."10. 

Perhaps  it  is  in  this  account  of  the  curatorial  role  as  the  pharmakon 
of  the  artwork  that  we  can  reconcile  Ukeles's  idea  of  maintenance  as 
the  life  instinct  with  the  concurrent  reality  of  maintenance  as  a  kind  of 
destructive  idealization,  a  kind  of  fixing  as  death  instinct.  This  requires 
a  somewhat  embarrassing,  new-agey  acknowledgment  of  the  cyclical, 
cooperative  relationship  between  life  and  death. 

The  emergence  of  conceptual  and  installation  art  in  the  latter  half  of 
the  twentieth  century  proposed  that  an  exhibition  could  take  as  its  sub- 
ject not  individual,  autonomous  objects  but  the  dialogue  between  art- 
works in  space.  If  this  dialogue  takes  place  in  the  space  between  objects, 
then  the  subject  of  the  exhibition  is  space:  blank  wall,  air,  concep- 
tual divide.  "One  can  say  that  objects  and  events  are  organized  by  an 
installation  space  like  individual  words  and  verbs  are  organized  by  a 
sentence.""  Curators  might  intend  to  maintain  the  original,  founda- 
tional meaning  of  an  artwork  when  they  are  actually  writing  a  new  (life 
or  death)  sentence. 

VII.  A  Brief  Note  on  Dust  and  "the  Market" 

The  curatorial  threat  may  be  waning,  of  course,  as  the  exhibition  space 
is  reproduced  in  the  virtual  realm  and  replaced  by  the  economic  space 
of  the  "art  market."12  When  the  art  collector,  auction  house,  or  private 
dealer  moves  artworks  through  this  inconceivable  space,  it  dematerial- 
izes  them  while  maintaining  them  as  valuable  items.  Even  artists  believe 
in  the  market.  Spanish  artist  Karmelo  Bermejo's  Fiscal  Canvas  (2013)  is 
a  square  of  stretched  linen  embroidered  with  the  phrase  "undeclared 
income,"  the  buyer  of  which  is  obliged  not  to  declare  the  acquisition, 
while  the  seller  must  not  declare  the  sale.  The  work  thus  cancels  its  own 
existence  in  the  market,  the  art  world's  space  of  reality.  Jacob  Kassay, 
acknowledging  his  own  prominent  position  in  the  art  market,  recently 
showed  a  series  of  his  recognizable  and  valuable  silver  paintings  at 

32  ANDREA  NEUSTEIN 


Galerie  Art:  Concept  in  Paris,  but  declared  in  the  press  release  that  the 
works  would  not  be  for  sale.  Exhibiting  them  thus  negates  their  "exis- 
tence" in  the  realm  of  the  market. 

Much  has  been  made  of  "the  archive"  as  the  realm  of  the  artist-as- 
researcher,  as  something  to  be  cited  by  the  critically  self-aware,  indexi- 
cal  artwork.  But  what  of  the  department  of  conservation?  The  Salvage 
Art  Institute,  Elka  Krajewska's  project  with  art  insurance  company 
AX  A,  is  a  collection  of  works  that  have  been  declared  damaged  beyond 
repair  and  seized  by  the  insurance  company;  the  works  therefore  have 
zero  value  and  are  stripped  of  their  authorship.  Yet  when  Krajewska 
exhibits  the  works,  they  are  shown  as  the  Salvage  Art  Institute  collec- 
tion, where  they  are  collected  rather  than  appropriated.  Their  original 
authorship  is  noted  in  a  wall  text  that  mimics  the  labeling  language 
used  by  the  insurers.  They  are  broken  artworks,  zero-value  artworks, 
discarded  artworks,  then,  but  artworks  still,  and  they  manage  to  func- 
tion outside  of  the  market. 

Apart  from  damaged  works  or  works  circulating  outside  the  market, 
perhaps  dust  is  the  most  recent  frontier  for  critical  art.  A  lot  of  the  artists 
who  think  about  maintenance  seem  particularly  concerned  with  dust. 
For  Duchamp,  dust  breeds  and  it  has  a  kind  of  productive  autonomy. 
For  Ukeles,  dust  is  circumstantial  but  central,  a  medium  through  which 
maintenance  art  can  be  enacted.  Throughout  his  practice,  Sam  Lewitt 
pits  the  means  through  which  history  and  information  are  produced 
against  the  obsolescence  of  their  varied  material  embodiments,  pointing 
out  the  precariousness  of  information  technology  and  perhaps  the  unre- 
liability of  its  contents.'3  In  his  Test  Subjects  (2010),  objects  with  reflec- 
tive surfaces,  such  as  a  helicopter  pilot's  helmet  or  an  Ikea  mirror,  are 
sprayed  with  nonarchival  photomount  and  coated  in  "Arizona  test  dust," 
a  manufactured  dust  (it  can  be  acquired  in  various  grades  such  as  Ai 
ultrafine  or  A4  coarse)  used  to  test  machinery  and  military  equipment 
in  extreme  environmental  conditions.  Relying  on  the  viewer's  associa- 
tion of  dust  with  age  and  the  authority  of  historical  narrative,  Lewitt 
proffers  the  objects  through  a  visual  and  conceptual  slight  of  hand.  Not 
only  are  the  objects  newly  bought,  but  the  dust  itself,  the  patina  of  nos- 
talgia, is  also  a  recently  manufactured  approximation,  a  simulation  of 
"real"  dust.  The  work  is  further  complicated  by  its  built-in  obsolescence: 
the  photomount  is  a  nonarchival  adhesive,  and  as  the  work  ages  and  the 

MAINTENANCE  AND  THE  GALLERY  33 

.  '.  -.  -.'.-■,  ....  •  .*  />■  i*  %  ■ 


photomount  weakens,  the  dust  presumably  will  drop  off  the  surface  and 
the  object  will  become  cleaner. 

If  space  and  time  are  invisible  and  generalized  phenomena,  then  dust 
is  particular.  Space  and  time  are  forceful;  dust  is  gentle,  but  insistent. 
Dust,  in  its  visible-invisible  omnipresence,  its  innately  democratic  char- 
acter, gives  the  impression  of  a  kind  of  universal  intimacy.  Dust  is  the 
symbolic  particularization  of  death  in  life.  "It  is  simply  the  veil  of  obliv- 
ion, the  membrane  of  neglect."'4  Dust  breeding:  deathly,  but  generative. 


34 


ANDREA  NEUSTEIN 


Notes 

i  According  to  Duchamp's  friend,  artist  and  author  Henri-Pierre  Roche: 
"Very  large  plates  of  glass  were  resting  on  trestles  ...  This  was  The  Bride  Stripped 
Bare  by  Her  Bachelors.  Parts  of  it  were  cleared  off.  Others  were  covered  with 
varying  thicknesses  of  dust.  A  sign  read:  Dust  Breeding.  To  be  respected .  .  .  ." 
Henri-Pierre  Roche  as  quoted  in  Caroline  Cros,  Marcel  Duchamp  (London: 
Reaktion  Books,  2006),  116. 

2  I  borrow  the  phrase  "poetics  of  refusal"  from  Nicolas  Guagnini. 

3  Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  "Manifesto  for  Maintenance  Art,  1969! 
Proposal  for  an  Exhibition,  'Care,'"  reproduced  in  this  catalogue,  pp.  118-121. 
On  the  relation  of  Ukeles  to  Duchamp's  refusal  to  work,  see  Helen  Molesworth, 
"Work  Stoppages:  Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles'  Theory  of  Labor  Value,"  Documents 
10,  Fall  1977,  19-22.  On  Ukeles's  work  in  relation  to  gallery  spaces  in  particu- 
lar, see  Miwon  Kwon,  "In  Appreciation  of  Invisible  Work:  Mierle  Laderman 
Ukeles  and  the  Maintenance  of  the  'White  Cube,'"  Documents  10,  Fall  1977, 
15-18. 

4  Molesworth,  20-21.  Ukeles  herself  spells  out  these  three  roles  in  doc- 
umentation for  Transfer,  see  Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  "Maintenance  Art 
Activity  (1973),"  Documents  10,  Fall  1977,  8. 

5  "It's  hard  to  work  on  a  painting  that  you've  deliberately  allowed  to  gather 
dust."  Molesworth,  22. 

6  Ibid. 

7  Ukeles,  "Manifesto  for  Maintenance  Art,  1969!"  118. 

8  A  potentially  helpful  illustration  of  the  concept  of  maintenance  worker 
as  invisible  revolutionary  or  critical  voice  is  the  Brett  Ratner  movie  Tower  Heist 
(2011),  in  which  a  motley  crew  of  maintenance  workers  in  a  luxury  condo — 
a  concierge,  an  elevator  operator,  a  doorman,  a  maid,  and  a  receptionist — 
use  their  built-in  invisibility  to  reclaim  a  stolen  pension  fund  from  a  Bernie 
Madoff-like  Ponzi-scheming  villain. 

9  Kwon,  "In  Appreciation  of  Invisible  Work." 

10  Boris  Groys,  "Politics  of  Installation,"  E-J lux  Journal  2,  January  2009, 
http://www.e-flux.com/journal/politics-of-installation/. 

11  Boris  Groys,  "Introduction — Global  Conceptualism  Revisited,"  E-flux 
Journal  29,  November  2011,  http://www.e-flux.com/journal/introduction 
— global-conceptualism-revisited/. 

12  Most  young  artists  I  know  look  at  the  installation-shot  aggregating  web- 
site Contemporary  Art  Daily  more  frequently  than  they  see  artwork  in  galler- 
ies, let  alone  on  studio  visits. 

13  For  example,  in  his  Fluid  Employment  installation  in  the  2012  Whitney 
Biennial,  Lewitt  laid  out  magnetized  computer  components  coated  in  ferro- 
magnetic fluid,  generally  used  to  lubricate  mechanisms  within  a  computer,  on 
a  plastic  tarp.  The  magnetic  liquid  clung  to  the  metal  parts  in  sea-urchin-like 
formations  that  undulated  in  shifting  air  currents  from  rotating  desk  fans.  The 

MAINTENANCE  AND  THE  GALLERY  35 


highly  unstable  liquid  had  to  be  replenished  every  ten  days  or  so.  After  fulfill- 
ing his  duties,  the  artist  would  leave  the  used  bottles  in  various  states  of  fullness 
scattered  throughout  the  installation. 

14  Joris-Karl  Huysmans,  The  Damned,  trans.  Terry  Hale  (London:  Penguin 
Classics,  2001),  24-25. 


36  ANDREA  NEUSTEIN 


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Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  Touch  Sanitation  Performance:  Fresh  Kills  Landfill,  1979-80. 
Ukeles  is  sitting  at  a  table  with  workers  from  the  New  York  City  Department  of  Sanitation 


MAINTENANCE  AND 
DEPENDENCY 


Nina  Horisaki-Christens 


During  the  2012  presidential  campaign,  a  heated  debate  broke  out 
between  Republicans  and  Democrats  around  the  terms  by  which 
President  Obama  qualified  the  achievements  of  entrepreneurs  and 
small-business  owners.  Spurred  on  by  the  Republican  convention's 
choice  of  the  theme  "We  Built  It"  as  a  response  to  Obama's  comment 
"You  didn't  build  that,"  the  debate  centered  on  the  perceived  auton- 
omy of  entrepreneurs.  While  Republicans  took  an  individualist  stance 
that  cited  the  ingenuity  and  perseverance  of  entrepreneurs,  the  point 
that  Obama  and  the  Democrats  tried  to  make  is  that  even  small,  indi- 
vidual ventures  still  rely  on  infrastructures,  services,  and  grants  from 
local  and  federal  governments  in  order  to  achieve  success.1  By  negat- 
ing the  individual's  claim  to  full  and  complete  credit  for  the  success 
of  the  business  he  or  she  founded,  Obama  invoked  the  myriad  social 
support  networks — roads,  fire  and  police  services,  education,  tax  breaks 
and  incentives,  and  so  on — that  cleared  the  ground  for  entrepreneurs 
to  start  their  businesses.  Such  a  claim  angered  conservatives  because  it 
directly  contradicts  the  fantasy  of  the  self-determining,  self-sufficient, 
liberated  subject  inherited  from  Enlightenment  thought — it  contradicts 
the  claims  of  individuality  so  dear  to  American  thought.  However,  such 
an  argument  does  not  necessarily  deny  difference  and  individuality,  but 
reframes  the  image  of  society  to  recognize  the  interdependence  of  indi- 
vidual citizens  and  the  political,  economic,  and  cultural  systems  that  we 
so  often  describe  in  ghettoizing  terms. 


39 


This  interdependence  is  also  constantly  linked  to  maintenance,  the 
set  of  actions  and  systems  that  support  life.  When  maintaining  those 
other  persons,  systems,  living  things,  or  objects  we  need  for  the  con- 
tinuation of  life  and  livelihood,  maintenance  can  illustrate  existing  rela- 
tionships of  dependency — after  all,  that  on  which  we  rely  for  life  must 
be  kept  in  good  working  order.  In  "Sanitation  Manifesto!"  (1984),  artist 
Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles  explores  such  connections  between  mainten- 
ance and  dependency  when  she  claims  that  "we  are,  all  of  us  whether  we 
desire  it  or  not,  in  relation  to  Sanitation,  implicated,  dependent — if  we 
want  the  City,  and  ourselves,  to  last  more  than  a  few  days."2  As  Ukeles 
implies,  living  both  hastens  the  processes  of  entropy  and  makes  us  reli- 
ant on  maintenance  activities  and  workers  to  hold  those  processes  at  bay. 
Similarly,  Stephen  Graham  and  Nigel  Thrift  write  in  their  analysis  of 
the  place  of  maintenance  in  the  contemporary  social  order,  "the  world 
is  involved  in  a  continuous  dying  that  can  only  be  fended  off  by  con- 
stant repair  and  maintenance."3  We  depend  on  the  sanitation  worker, 
the  office  maintenance  staff,  the  nurse,  or  the  mother  in  order  to  create  a 
space  that  can  support  public  discourse,  cultural  production,  commerce, 
and  exchange.  In  turn,  these  workers  rely  on  their  communities,  clients, 
and  social  structures  to  support  them  as  they  fulfill  their  duties.  These 
cycles  of  need  and  dependency  show  the  centrality  of  maintenance 
workers,  and  by  extension  maintenance  activities,  to  our  social  fabric. 

Maintenance  is  generally  characterized  as  a  conservative  action, 
aimed  at  warding  off  the  entropic  forces  that  would  render  us  immobile, 
shelterless,  unable  to  communicate,  and  subject  to  disease  and  pesti- 
lence. Ukeles  herself  initially  describes  maintenance  as  "direct  feedback 
systems  with  little  room  for  change."4  In  fact,  Ukeles  questions  and 
rethinks  this  understanding  of  maintenance  tasks:  she  seeks  out  the 
creative  potential  within  the  limited  terms  on  which  maintenance  func- 
tions, redefining  the  creative  act  to  include  something  less  like  produc- 
tion and  more  akin  to  process.  It  is  in  the  doing  of  the  task  that  one 
can  find  one's  voice.  Graham  and  Thrift  also  support  this  point  when 
they  argue  that  "maintenance  and  repair  can  itself  be  a  vital  source  of 
variation,  improvisation,  and  innovation."  For  example,  a  repair  need 
not  restore  something  to  its  original  form,  but  can  also  alter  something 
to  avoid  the  need  for  such  repairs  in  the  future.  They  go  on  to  posit 
that  "seen  in  this  light,  'maintenance  is  learning.'"5  This  conceptual 

40  NINA  HORISAKI-CHRISTENS 


inversion — the  shift  from  maintenance  as  enforcer  of  the  status  quo  to 
maintenance  as  generator  of  knowledge  and  improvement — resembles 
Ukeles's  claim  that,  as  opposed  to  the  system  of  sanitation  that  is  under- 
valued, disdained,  or  rigidly  subordinated  in  a  hierarchical  relationship 
with  the  rest  of  society,  sanitation  as  action  implies  equality.  Society 
cannot  function  without  the  clearing  of  space  and  disposal  of  waste 
that  sanitation  provides.  And  the  fact  that  those  who  do  the  work  of 
sanitation  must  serve  all  members  of  that  society,  regardless  of  class, 
means  that  "sanitation,  in  democracy,  implies  the  possibility  of  a  public- 
social-contract  operating  laterally,  not  upstairs-downstairs,  but  equally 
between  the  servers  and  the  served."6  Seen  in  this  light,  maintenance 
activities  can  be  understood  as  generative,  productive  forces  that  create 
the  space  for  life  and  liberty,  clearing  the  ground — in  a  multiplicity  of 
senses — for  a  pluralistic  and  vital  public  sphere. 

Much  like  Ukeles's  claim  that  the  networks  formed  by  sanitation 
create  equivalences  of  need  that  imply  equality,  Eva  Feder  Kittay  argues 
for  the  idea  of  an  equality  based  on  dependency,  rather  than  one  based 
on  individual  character  and  "voluntarily  chosen  obligations  assumed  for 
mutual  benefit  and  self-interest."  This  equality  is  based  not  on  individu- 
als but  on  the  connections  between  them.  While  many  of  these  connec- 
tions are  unequal,  with  one  party  holding  greater  power  or  greater  need 
in  the  specific  relationship  between  the  two,  Kittay 's  point  is  that  all  of 
us  to  some  degree  or  another  are  caught  in  some  form  of  dependency 
relationship:  dependency  is  an  inescapable  state,  universal  at  the  same 
time  that  it  forges  social  and  ethical  connections.  This  is  not  so  when 
we  consider  a  model  based  on  voluntarily  chosen  obligations,  which 
assumes  that  equality  is  based  on  the  productive  contributions  of  all 
members  of  society,  inherently  leaving  out  those  members  who  cannot 
contribute  productively.  The  question  shifts  from,  What  my  are  rights  as 
an  equal?  to  "What  are  my  responsibilities  to  others  with  whom  I  stand 
in  specific  relations  and  what  are  the  responsibilities  of  others  to  me,  so 
that  I  can  be  well  cared  for  and  have  my  needs  addressed  even  as  I  care 
for  and  respond  to  the  needs  of  those  who  depend  on  me?"7 

Clearly,  Kittay 's  rethinking  of  dependency  and  equality  also  involves 
a  shift  from  the  language  of  rights  to  that  of  responsibilities.  As  Kittay 
points  out  in  relation  to  John  Rawls's  conception  of  primary  goods,  the 
problem  with  a  discussion  of  rights  is  that  it  presupposes  a  set  of  ideal- 


jfij'    '.  -■       .;■-,        -MAINTENANCE  AND  DEPENDENCY  ♦".   ..  41 


ized  individuals  equally  capable  of  both  claiming  their  rights  and  shoul- 
dering the  burden  of  social  cooperation,  a  situation  that  is  applicable  to 
neither  those  who  require  extensive  care  nor  those  who  care  for  them. 
Those  who  require  care — whether  young,  ill,  elderly,  or  disabled — 
cannot  be  assumed  to  be  capable  of  voicing  their  rights  nor  of  contrib- 
uting equally  to  systems  of  social  cooperation.  Likewise,  care  workers 
must  often  subordinate  their  own  personal  rights  and  their  contributions 
to  greater  society  to  their  responsibility  both  to  care  for,  and  to  represent 
the  rights  of,  their  charges.8  If  we  shift  instead  to  a  discussion  of  respon- 
sibilities, we  open  up  a  space  for  recognizing  the  responsibility  of  the 
whole  of  society  to  the  dependent  individual,  a  responsibility  to  secure 
our  individual  rights  when  we  become  incapacitated.  The  recognition 
of  this  responsibility  also  acknowledges  the  care  worker  as  a  stand- 
in  for  the  responsibilities  of  the  greater  society,  which  should  afford 
those  workers  compensation  equivalent  to  this  role.  In  other  words, 
such  a  shift  recognizes  that  society  depends  on  those  who  care  for  the 
young,  has  a  moral  responsibility  to  care  for  the  elderly  and  disabled, 
and  should  promise  access  to  equality  for  all  citizens.  It  also  recognizes 
that  we  all  have  needs  to  be  met  and  meeting  those  needs  is  not  simply 
a  personal  responsibility  but  one  that  falls  on  society.  In  the  words  of 
Judith  Butler, 

We  cannot  presume  the  enclosed  and  well-fed  space  of  the  polis, 
where  all  the  material  needs  are  somehow  being  taken  care  of 
elsewhere  by  beings  whose  gender,  race,  or  status  render  them 
ineligible  for  public  recognition.  Rather,  we  have  to  not  only  bring 
the  material  urgencies  of  the  body  into  the  [public]  square,  but  to 
make  those  needs  central  to  the  demands  of  politics." 

While  Kittay's  argument  was  confined  to  a  consideration  of  care  work- 
ers and  their  charges,  Butler's  comments  suggest  the  essential  nature  of 
our  dependency  on  others.  The  pursuit  of  equality  requires  responsibil- 
ity for  each  other's  needs  in  all  relationships  throughout  society,  even 
among  those  who  are  more  able  bodied. 

The  recognition  of  dependency  serves  as  an  underlying,  motivating 
force  in  Ukeles's  practice,  focused  as  it  is  on  redefining  maintenance 
as  art.  Her  initial  impetus  for  developing  a  concept  of  maintenance  as 
art  came  from  her  experiences  as  an  artist  and  new  mother.  Told  by  a 
mentor  that  she  could  not  be  both  a  mother  and  an  artist,  and  finding 

42  NINA  HORISAKI-CHRISTENS 


** 


that  her  labors  as  a  new  mother  were  constantly  dismissed  in  conversa- 
tion with  her  friends  and  colleagues,  she  felt  it  necessary  to  make  that 
work  of  caring — the  work  of  mothering — into  an  artistic  practice,  in 
order  to  recognize  its  value,  its  conceptual  weight,  and  its  creativity.  She 
likened  the  work  of  maintenance  to  process  art  and  first  documented 
it  as  performance  in  Maintenance  Art  Tasks  (1973).  This  photographic 
album  contains  a  series  of  snapshots  recording  the  procedures  of  main- 
tenance activities  in  all  their  duration  and  complexity:  washing  dishes, 
sorting  and  cleaning  the  laundry,  changing  diapers,  accompanying  kids 
to  a  doctor's  checkup,  washing  and  polishing  a  car,  filling  a  dumpster 
with  construction  debris,  and  getting  a  haircut.  By  equating  her  own 
actions  (doing  the  laundry,  changing  diapers)  with  those  of  paid  labor- 
ers (washing  and  polishing  cars,  moving  construction  debris),  she  chal- 
lenges the  status  of  care  work  as  unworthy  of  acknowledgement  as  work 
ind  ascribes  greater  value  to  those  actions.  At  the  same  time,  by  docu- 
menting the  work  in  obsessive  detail,  she  conveys  a  sense  of  duration, 
making  the  process  of  this  often  hidden,  generally  domestic  work  vis- 
ible and  tangible.  She  simultaneously  claims  this  work  as  art  through  a 
conceptual  turn  that  bears  a  striking  resemblance  to  works  such  as  Vito 
Acconci's  Blinking  Piece  (1969),  in  which  photo  documentation  from 
the  performer's  perspective  redefines  a  daily  action  as  a  performance. 
Through  her  art  and  writings,  including  Maintenance  Art  Tasks,  Ukeles 
argues  that  the  value  of  maintenance  must  be  acknowledged,  and  since 
a  key  part  of  its  value  is  its  indispensability — in  other  words,  our  depen- 
dence on  it — she  makes  a  case  for  the  recognition  of  our  dependencies. 
However,  this  attempt  to  alter  the  view  of  care  work  remains  within 
the  realm  of  advocacy,  situated  as  it  is  within  a  feminist  context  seek- 
ing to  reposition  care  workers,  who  are  predominantly  women,  within 
the  social  hierarchy  and  thereby  to  claim  agency  for  women.  The  goal 
of  providing  the  maintenance  worker,  including  the  domestic  worker, 
I  with  greater  recognition,  appreciation,  and  equality,  while  laudable, 
I  does  not  question  the  power  dynamics  implicit  within  care  work  or  the 
'  problematics  in  the  activity  of  maintaining  something.  Maintaining  a 
1  system  or  body  is  not  inherently  selfless  and  can  become  restrictive  and 
manipulative  when  applied  as  an  oppressive  system  or  to  a  body  in  pain.10 
The  often  unequal  relationships  of  dependency  created  in  care  work  also 
contain  the  potential  for  abuse.  Artist  Park  McArthur  disturbs  Ukeles's 

MAINTENANCE  AND  DEPENDENCY  43 


positive  spin  on  dependency  in  her  largely  autobiographical  text,  video, 
and  performance  works.  Through  her  work,  McArthur  grapples  with 
the  realities  of  being  a  disabled  or  differently-abled  individual  in  a  soci- 
ety that  does  not  recognize  the  essential  nature  of  dependency.  Such  a 
society  creates  a  health-care  and  welfare  system  that  assumes  and  plans 
for  the  temporary  needs  of  the  generally  mobile  and  independent  indi- 
vidual, leaving  little  space  and  insufficient  resources  to  deal  with  those 
who  need  longer-term  care.  Faced  with  the  financial  realities  of  long- 
term  assistance  and  care,  McArthur  has  looked  to  an  alternative  in  the 
form  of  a  care  collective,  and  her  work  revolves  around  the  relationships 
engendered  by  her  physical,  financial,  and  emotional  indebtedness. 

In  her  wall  label  works  Carried  &  Held  and  Abstraction  (both  2012- 
13),  she  lists  the  support  systems  that  have  allowed  her  to  function  in 
a  productive  way.  As  the  title  implies,  Carried  &  Held  lists  the  various 
people  who  have  held  her  or  picked  her  up  throughout  her  life — both 
those  she  knows  and  those  she  does  not — with  a  description  of  who  they 
were.  Interrupted  by  a  random  grouping  of  emoticons  and  including 
certain  vague  descriptions  such  as  "Unknown  Taiwanese  Businessman" 
or  "middle  school  history  teacher  David  somebody,"  the  list  provides  a 
sense  of  the  personal,  affective  nature  of  these  relationships,  some  of 
which  last  only  through  one  encounter  while  others  occur  again  and 
again.  This  affective  component  in  combination  with  the  impersonal 
descriptions  of  certain  individuals  reveals  the  sense  of  vulnerability 
implicit  in  dependency  relationships.  McArthur's  vulnerability  is  fur- 
ther illustrated  in  her  video  and  performance  work,  including  It's  Sorta 
Like  a  Big  Hug  (2012).  The  video,  shot  at  close  range  without  sound, 
focuses  on  the  bodily  movements  and  negotiations  necessary  to  move 
McArthur  from  her  wheelchair  to  her  bed.  Exposing  the  intimacy  of 
these  movements,  and  the  degree  to  which  McArthur  must  rely  on 
her  caregiver  to  place  and  care  for  her  body,  the  work  gives  us  a  clear 
physical  sense  of  vulnerability  and  responsibility.  As  seen  in  this  work, 
dependency  implicitly  creates  an  inequality  between  people  that  can  be 
reciprocated  only  partly,  often  in  the  form  of  affective  bonds,  and  this 
inequality  is  where  the  vulnerabilities  of  both  charge  and  caretaker  lie. 
In  Kittay's  words, 

The  relationship  between  the  dependency  worker  and  her  charge 
is  importantly  a  relation  of  trust.  The  charge  must  trust  that  the 

44  NINA  HORISAKI-CHRISTENS 


/• 


dependency  worker  will  be  responsible  to  and  respectful  of  her 
vulnerability  and  will  not  abuse  whatever  authority  and  power  has 
been  vested  in  her  to  carry  out  these  responsibilities.  The  depen- 
dency worker  must,  in  turn,  trust  the  charge  neither  to  make 
demands  that  go  beyond  her  true  needs,  to  exploit  the  attach- 
ments that  are  formed  through  the  work  of  care,  nor  exploit  the 
vulnerabilities  that  either  result  from  the  dependency  work,  or 
that  have  resulted  in  the  caregiver  engaging  in  dependency  work." 

But  the  personal,  affective  side  of  this  labor  is  not  the  only  aspect  of 
care  McArthur's  work  touches  on.  Another  wall  label  work  describes 
the  various  financial  resources,  from  grants  and  re-grants  to  gifts  and 
loans,  that  have  allowed  McArthur  to  live  a  somewhat  independent  and 
productive  life  despite  the  pressing  financial  burden  of  her  bodily  care. 
In  Nirmala  Erevelles's  materialist  analysis  of  the  disabled  subject,  she 
speaks  of  how  capitalism,  in  its  need  for  efficiency,  productivity,  and  a 
market  of  surplus  labor  has  "effectively  excluded  disabled  people  from 
participating  as  wage  workers  and  therefore  rendered  them  dependent 
on  the  state.""  Similarly,  she  describes  how  the  globalization  of  trans- 
national capitalism  has  lead  to  the  shifting  of  jobs  overseas,  creating 
economic  crises  that  lead  to  cuts  in  public  spending  and  the  slashing 
of  budgets  for  government  programs  that  support  the  disabled,  which 
range  from  financial  support  to  public  health  care,  job  training  and 
placement  programs,  and  meal  delivery  services,  to  name  a  few.'3  As 
the  needs  of  the  disabled  may  be  in  excess  of  what  either  they  them- 
selves can  earn  or  beyond  what  their  families  can  afford,  the  loss  of 
state  support  forces  individuals  to  spend  much  time  and  energy  simply 
seeking  the  financial  resources  to  continue  living,  a  state  of  affairs  that 
further  alienates  them  from  "productive"  society  and  points  to  a  general 
devaluing  of  the  disabled  subject.  Such  a  devaluing  of  a  select  group  of 
citizens,  as  of  any  minority  group,  calls  into  question  the  ethical  priori- 
ties of  our  society;  once  it  is  considered  permissible  to  leave  one  group 
unconsidered  and  uncared  for,  everyone  else  is  at  risk  of  the  same  dis- 
crimination once  they  are  considered  unproductive.  We  must  remember 
that  the  able-bodied  state  we  take  for  granted  as  the  basis  for  a  "normal" 
life  is  actually  just  a  temporary  state,  for  as  children  and  elderly  persons, 
or  when  faced  with  unforeseen  medical  conditions,  we  are  rendered  vul- 
nerable and  in  need  of  care.  Thus  the  risks  she  points  out  for  the  disabled 
body  have  real  effects  for  all  of  us. 

MAINTENANCE  AND  DEPENDENCY  45 


However,  dependency  is  not  confined  only  to  social  relations 
between  individuals.  In  addition  to  certain  economic  aspects  of  depen- 
dency I  have  already  touched  on,  the  body  also  depends  on  the  physi- 
cal world,  including  architecture,  urban  space,  and  communications. 
As  Butler  writes,  bodies  "can  persist  and  act  only  when  they  are  sup- 
ported, by  environments,  by  nutrition,  by  work,  by  modes  of  sociality 
and  belonging."14  Ukeles  begins  to  address  issues  of  dependence  on  the 
physical  world  through  her  work  with  the  New  York  City  Department 
of  Sanitation,  most  specifically  in  the  multi-part  Touch  Sanitation  (1979- 
84).  Over  the  course  of  the  project,  she  met  and  spoke  with  many  "San 
men,"  learning  not  only  about  their  interactions  with  the  public  but  also 
about  the  system  and  labor  conditions  of  waste  management.  In  two 
later  video  components  of  the  work,  Sanman  Speaks  and  Waste  Flow 
(both  1979-84),  she  reveals  the  physical  conditions  of  sanitation  work: 
the  sheer  volume  of  material  being  transported,  the  bodily  manipula- 
tions required  and  the  ensuing  damage  that  can  be  caused  by  such  work, 
and  the  unbelievable  variety  of  the  refuse.  By  exposing  the  quantity  of 
waste  and  the  complexity  of  waste  management  systems  through  narra- 
tive interviews,  shadowing  waste  workers,  and  documenting  the  move- 
ment of  waste  from  residences  to  landfills — in  word,  movement,  and 
image — she  attempts  to  show  how  "productive"  consumer  cycles  make 
us  dependent  on  the  unseemly  and  unacknowledged  work  of  the  waste 
management  system.  As  she  writes  in  her  "Sanitation  Manifesto," 

Sanitation,  as  an  environmental  energy  system,  is  trapped  in  a 
miasma  of  essentially  pre-democratic  perceptions.  The  public 
generally  doesn't  "see"  beyond  the  tip  of  its  nose — or  see  where  we 
put  our  waste,  or  see  what  we  do  or  should  do  with  it,  or  see  what 
choices  we  have  about  managing  our  waste  ....  To  begin  to  accept 
as  "ours"  the  difficult  social  task  of  dealing  with  "our"  waste  at  the 
highest,  not  the  most  mediocre,  level  of  intelligence  and  creativity 
in  reality,  in  all  its  effulgent  scale  here,  people  need  to  understand 
how  they  connect  one  to  the  other  across  our  society,  in  all  its 
scale.  We  need  holistic  inter-connected  perceptual  models  of  how 
we  connect  and  how  we  add  up.'5 

Of  course,  sanitation  and  waste  management  are  not  the  only  systems 
that  illuminate  our  dependence  on  the  physical  world.  Yve  Laris  Cohen, 
a  trained  dancer  and  artist,  creates  sited  performances  that  expose  the 
individual's  various  dependencies  on  physical  space.  His  performances, 

46  NINA  HORISAKI-CHRISTENS 


if      , 


ons 


Jit) 


Yve  Laris  Cohen,  Waltz;  Cross  Hesitation,  2012.  White  wall,  white  floor,  white 
wall,  white  floor,  black  wall,  black  floor,  white  transsexual.  Performance  views, 
Thomas  Erben  Gallery,  New  York,  May  18,  2012 


MAINTENANCE  AND  DEPENDENCY 


47 


■/,:      .....'       ,4         '*>        / 


■■? 


designed  in  response  to  the  architecture  of  the  nontraditional  spaces 
in  which  he  usually  works — hallways,  galleries,  closets,  and  storage 
spaces — place  the  body  in  direct  opposition  to  the  architecture  while 
still  remaining  subject  to  its  structures.  In  Coda  (2012)  he  repeatedly 
performed  a  series  of  chaine  turns  down  the  length  of  an  eighty-feet- 
long  by  three-feet-wide  hallway,  after  using  his  T-shirt  as  a  rag  to  wipe 
down  the  hallway's  wall  (to  which  a  sprung  floor  had  been  attached).  In 
conflating  the  repetition  of  rehearsal — a  form  of  bodily  maintenance — 
and  the  labor  of  cleaning  with  formal  performance,  Laris  Cohen  equates 
aesthetic  production  with  maintenance  work.  In  pushing  the  limits  of 
his  body  to  maintain  the  spin  down  the  narrow  space,  he  also  simul- 
taneously illustrates  how  the  movements  of  our  bodies  through  space 
are  necessarily  circumscribed  by  architecture.  Architecture,  while  not 
restricting  us  entirely,  still  delimits  our  movements  through  both  pri- 
vate and  public  spaces  in  countless  unseen  and  unacknowledged  ways, 
structuring  the  way  we  see  and  understand  our  world.  Our  ability  to  live 
is  heavily  determined  by  the  public,  commercial,  corporate,  and  private 
architectures  we  find  ourselves  in,  and  we  become  dependent  on  them 
to  facilitate  our  productivity,  our  efficient  movement  through  public 
space,  and  our  nightly  recovery. 

Laris  Cohen  also  points  to  the  way  the  supposedly  independent 
creative  act  depends  on  other  structures  beyond  architecture,  contra- 
dicting our  understanding  of  self-sufficiency  and  the  myth  of  the  lone 
genius  artist.  Toward  the  end  of  many  of  his  performances,  he  recites  a 
text  listing  in  an  almost  confessional  manner  all  of  the  materials,  time, 
assistance,  and  production  necessary  to  realize  the  work.  By  revealing 
this  material,  the  statement  exposes  how  creative  practice  necessarily 
depends  on  development  and  maintenance  mechanisms  such  as  fund- 
ing, grants,  and  other  economic  systems;  the  material  production  of 
manufacturing;  and  social  systems  of  support,  among  others.  By  calling 
attention  to  these  larger  systems,  Laris  Cohen  shows  how  a  creative 
practice  is  always  constituted  and  maintained  in  relation  to  both  human 
and  nonhuman  others. 

While  Laris  Cohen's  work  touches  on  infrastructure  in  the  form 
of  architecture  and  economic  systems,  there  is  another  ubiquitous  sys- 
tem we  find  ourselves  dependent  on  in  the  contemporary  world:  com- 
munications technology.  With  regard  to  the  disabled  body,  Erevelles 


NINA  HORISAKI-CHRISTENS 


ss# 


••;  .   -•> 


*."■*- 


■claims  that  "the  very  viability  of  this  disabled  body  is  often  sustained 
and  rendered  'livable'  through  a  network  of  communication  technolo- 
gies and  biotechnologies.""'  While  this  dependence  on  communications 
technologies  may  be  especially  conspicuous  for  a  body  that  has  limited 
ability  to  move,  even  those  of  us  who  are  more  mobile  can  find  our- 
selves helpless  when  faced  with  a  problem  in  a  communications  system. 
These  technologies,  from  the  landline  and  mobile  phone  to  the  inter- 
net and  even  to  satellite  communications,  have  become  integral  to  the 
exchange  of  information  that  drives  our  economy  and  by  extension  our 
living  bodies.  Although  this  technology  makes  up  the  infrastructure 
of  our  contemporary  world,  we  often  forget  about  our  vulnerability  to 
its  failure.  We  take  its  functioning  for  granted,  imagining  such  infra- 
structures as  solid  and  fixed,  designed  to  function  smoothly  rather  than 
improvised  from  a  variety  of  components  developed  independently  and 
fit  together  imperfectly.  In  the  case  of  communications  technology,  this 
impression  of  perfect  order  is  further  exacerbated  by  our  interfaces  with 
these  systems — computers,  mobile  phones,  and  tablets — that  lead  us  to 
imagine  them  as  "virtual,"  non-physical  networks,  distancing  us  from 
an  understanding  of  the  ways  in  which  such  systems  are  vulnerable  to 
the  vagaries  of  time,  weather,  and  human  error. 

A  poignant  reminder  of  the  precarious  and  adamantly  physical  nature 
of  this  system  we  like  to  fantasize  as  immaterial  can  be  found  in  Taryn 
Simon's  eloquent  image  Transatlantic  Sub-Marine  Cables  Reaching  Land 
(2007).  A  mundane,  nondescript,  office-like  space  complete  with  off- 
white  walls  and  a  vinyl  tile  floor  is  transected  by  five  thick  orange  and 
yellow  cables  running  up  the  wall  like  a  ladder,  protected  only  by  a  short 
metal  barrier  that  resembles  a  railing.  The  presence  of  this  conduit,  so 
essential  for  our  ability  to  communicate  with  Europe,  Western  Asia, 
and  Africa,  in  the  context  of  a  familiar  utilitarian  office  space  void  of 
any  spectacular  protections  and  so  similar  in  appearance  to  the  Ethernet 
cables  we  use  and  discard  freely  when  they  are  worn  out,  shows  the  frag- 
ile and  essentially  material  nature  of  the  networks  we  rely  on  to  sustain 
the  supposedly  virtual  worlds  of  email,  the  internet,  financial  markets, 
and  the  like.  In  exposing  the  vulnerability  of  the  infrastructure  of  wires 
and  cables  that  creates  the  internet,  Simon's  work  reminds  us  that  vir- 
tual communication  is  also  an  embodied  experience,  different  but  no 
less  risky  than  face-to-face  conversation  or  protest.  Communications 

MAINTENANCE  AND  DEPENDENCY  49 


%. 


.2!'  " 


!*'.  \<)i*.  ■ 


technologies  may  goad  us  into  a  perception  of  ourselves  as  free  and 
unfettered  by  our  physical  forms,  but  in  fact  "the  use  of  the  technol- 
ogy effectively  implicates  the  body.  Not  only  must  someone's  hand  tap 
and  send,  but  someone's  body  is  on  the  line  if  that  tapping  and  sending 
gets  traced."'7  Just  as  we  are  physically  dependent  on  this  system,  we  are 
also  implicated  in  it,  physically,  socially,  and  politically.  Our  embodied 
nature  makes  us  reliant  upon  these  systems  of  communication,  architec- 
ture, sanitation,  and  care,  thereby  implicating  us  in  a  set  of  connections 
that  constitutes  us  as  essentially  social  beings. 

Maintenance  and  dependency  are  not  equivalent;  there  are  things 
we  maintain  simply  because  we  value  them  and  not  out  of  any  need. 
Nonetheless,  maintenance  illuminates  dependency  because  those  rela- 
tionships and  things  on  which  we  depend  must  be  maintained.  As 
Butler  reminds  us,  "we  cannot  exist  without  addressing  the  Other  and 
without  being  addressed  by  the  Other  .  .  .  there  is  no  wishing  away 
our  fundamental  sociality."  At  the  same  time,  this  interdependence 
does  not  contradict  our  independence  or  our  difference,  for  "no  matter 
how  much  we  each  desire  recognition  and  require  it,  we  are  not  there- 
fore the  same  as  the  Other,  and  not  everything  counts  as  recognition 
in  the  same  way."18  While  dependence  and  liberty  are  not  incompat- 
ible, they  are  always  in  tension.  The  desires  and  needs  of  individuals, 
including  their  rights,  are  not  always  compatible  with  those  of  other 
members  of  society,  and  the  conflicts  caused  by  these  incompatibili- 
ties must  be  regulated  by  our  social  and  political  systems.  Recognizing 
our  dependency  on  others  is  a  necessary  step  toward  a  more  egalitar- 
ian society  because  it  provides  us  with  an  appreciation  of  the  primacy 
of  responsibility  over  rights,  creating  a  more  inclusive  way  to  define 
social  and  political  justice.  At  the  same  time,  examining  dependency 
uncovers  our  reliance  on  the  nonhuman,  physical  world,  reminding  us 
of  our  embodied  existence.  It  is  in  the  process  of  acknowledging  our 
interconnectedness  that  we  come  to  terms  with  the  complexities  and 
pitfalls — physical,  emotional,  social,  political — of  our  already  exis- 
tent dependencies.  By  extension,  acknowledging  this  interconnect- 
edness also  repositions  maintenance  as  both  an  indispensible  activity 
and  essential  value  for  our  long-term  health  and  that  of  our  society. 


50  NINA  HORISAKl-CHRISTENS 

<  0  • 


Notes 

i      See  Andrew  Rosenthal,  "You  Didn't  Build  That,"  New  York  Times,  Taking 
!it      Note  blog,  February  27,  2012,  http://takingnote.blogs.nytimes.com/20.12/07/27/ 
you-didnt-build-that/. 

2  Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  "Sanitation  Manifesto!"  (1984),  The  Act  2,  no.  1, 
1990,  84-85. 

3  Stephen  Graham  and  Nigel  Thrift,  "Out  of  Order:  Understanding 
Repair  and  Maintenance,"  Theory,  Culture  &  Society  24,  no.  3,  May  2007,  6; 
available  online  at  http://tcs.sagepub.eom/cgi/content/abstract/24/3/1. 

4  Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  "Manifesto  for  Maintenance  Art,  1969! 
Proposal  for  an  Exhibition,  'Care,'"  reproduced  in  this  catalogue,  p.  118. 

5  Graham  and  Thrift,  6. 

6  Ukeles,  "Sanitation  Manifesto!"  85. 

7  Eva  Feder  Kittay,  Love's  Labor:  Essays  on  Women,  Equality  and 
Dependency  (New  York:  Routledge,  1999),  25. 

8  Kittay,  100-146.  For  a  full  discussion  of  the  differences  between  Rawls's 
social-contract  formulation  of  equality  and  Kittay 's  dependency  argument,  see 
Kittay,  chps.  2-4. 

9  Judith  Butler,  "Bodies  in  Alliance  and  the  Politics  of  the  Street,"  in 
Sensible  Politics:  The  Visual  Culture  of  Nongovernmental  Activism,  ed.  Meg 
McLagan  and  Yates  McKee  (New  York:  Zone  Books,  2012),  135. 

10  For  more  on  the  ways  artists  have  take  up  the  complexities  of  care  rela- 
tionships, see  the  catalogue  of  the  2004-05  Independent  Study  Program  exhi- 
bition, curated  by  Sasha  Archibald,  Sarah  Lookofsky,  Cira  Pascual  Marquina, 
and  Elena  Sorokina:  Archibald  et  al.,  At  the  Mercy  of  Others:  The  Politics  of  Care 
(exhibition  catalogue)  (New  York:  Whitney  Museum  of  American  Art,  2005). 

11  Kittay,  35. 

12  Nirmala  Erevelles,  "In  Search  of  the  Disabled  Subject,"  in  Embodied 
Rhetorics:  Disability  in  Language  and  Culture,  ed.  James  C.  Wilson  and  Cynthia 
Lewiecki-Wilson  (Carbondale:  Southern  Illinois  University  Press,  2001),  100. 

13  Ibid.,  93. 

14  Butler,  "Bodies  in  Alliance,"  124. 

15  Ukeles,  "Sanitation  Manifesto!"  85. 

16  Erevelles,  97. 

17  Butler,  "Bodies  in  Alliance,"  131. 

18  Judith  Butler,  Giving  an  Account  of  Oneself  (New  York:  Fordham 
University  Press,  2005),  33. 


MAINTENANCE  AND  DEPENDENCY  CI 


MMiMms 


.1  l:**'» 


Goldin+Senneby,  Headless  Symbol,  2007.  Designed  byjohan  Hjerpe 


THE  HOUSE  OF 
INVISIBLE  CARDS 


Jason  Waite 


In  the  aftermath  of  the  recent  recession  and  subsequent  economic  mal- 
aise we  have  witnessed  the  havoc  wreaked  by  the  financialization  of  the 
economy — by  the  very  maintenance  instruments  originally  intended  to 
mitigate  risk.  Financialization  consists  of  the  "diversion  of  savings  from 
household  economies"  into  securities  and  other  financial  instruments 
that  "shift  the  financing  of  the  economy  from  the  banking  sector  to 
the  securities  sector,"  wherein  leverage  begins  to  overtake  equity  as  the 
dominate  form  of  capital.1  An  example  of  these  new  financial  vehicles 
are  derivatives,  which  were  devised  as  a  means  of  providing  insurance, 
similar  to  a  hedge  where  one  puts  forward  a  small  amount  of  money 
to  insure  against  a  loss.  These  derivatives  were  later  transformed  into 
means  of  wagering  bets,  similar  to  taking  out  an  insurance  policy  on 
someone  else's  home  and  then  collecting  the  full  value  of  the  house 
when  it  burns  down.  In  this  the  new  speculative  financial  economy  a 
"shadow  banking  system"  emerged  that  went  largely  unnoticed  in  the 
public  sphere  and  was  left  by  regulators  to  manage  itself.2 

This  narrative  is  now  familiar  to  us  as  we  feel  daily  the  effects  of  the 
systemic  malfunction  of  the  economy  fomented  by  these  instruments.3 
However,  since  the  crisis,  a  widening  search  for  new  productive  havens 
for  capital  has  developed  as  capital  seeks  to  embed  itself  in  other  main- 
tenance systems,  the  domestic  sphere  in  particular.  Mortgages,  credit 
cards,  payday  loans,  financing,  retirement  savings,  and  investments 
have  all  become  a  normal  part  of  managing  the  household.4  No  lon- 


53 


^ 


ger  is  it  just  the  structure  of  the  house  that  is  being  speculated  on  and 
securitized.  Today  sophisticated  instruments  previously  exclusive  to  the 
realm  of  savvy  investors  are  now  available  to  homeowners  in  the  form 
of  housing  derivatives  to  hedge  their  potential  loss  if  they  try  to  sell 
their  property  and  the  overall  value  of  the  housing  market  decreases.5 
However,  in  a  paper  on  the  difference  between  the  use  of  these  financial 
instruments  in  the  domestic  sphere  and  their  use  by  institutional  inves- 
tors, Dick  Bryan,  Randy  Martin,  and  Mike  Rafferty  argue 

For  labor  to  "really"  be  on  the  same  footing  as  capital  would 
require  that  labor  could  take  on  the  risk  management  capacities  of 
capital.  The  most  fundamental  of  these  is  limited  liability,  which 
is  now  integral  to  the  corporate  form  of  capital.  For  labor,  this 
would  involve  the  construction  of  a  fictive  legal  entity  that  stands 
for  labor  but  is  not  itself  labor.  But  the  accumulation  of  capital  is 
predicated  on  the  fact  that  the  worker  cannot  be  separated  from 
their  labor  power:  the  worker  is  concurrently  commodity  capital 
and  variable  capital,  and  the  difference  in  these  values  is  the  basis 
of  surplus  value.6 

The  ontological  difference  between  an  individual  and  an  investment 
firm  is  the  juridical  protection  afforded  to  latter  in  the  form  of  limited 
liability  companies,  which  protect  individuals  in  the  firm  from  liability 
for  their  financial  losses.  Investment  firms  can  offshore  risk  and  walk 
away  from  a  bad  deal  whereas  individuals  are  tattooed  with  their  credit 
history  and  even  in  bankruptcy  are  not  absolved  from  such  obligations 
as  student  loans.  And  "sexually  transmitted  debt"  is  no  longer  solely 
restricted  to  formerly  hetero-normative  relationships  such  as  marriage 
because  the  joining  of  finances  between  partners  is  increasingly  becom- 
ing inscribed  in  law  with  civil  unions  and  same-sex  marriage.7  How 
can  we  understand  this  appearance  of  economic  value  in  the  domestic 
sphere  and  its  articulation  in  the  cultural  field? 

One  artistic  practice  that  makes  visible  how  economic  value  is  pro- 
duced in  the  domestic  sphere  is  that  of  Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles  and 
her  "maintenance  art."  Its  origins  lie  in  the  "Manifesto  for  Maintenance 
Art"  first  published  in  Artforum  in  January  1971,  which  called  for  a 
reevaluation  of  everyday  household  activities  and  of  their  capacity  to 
be  works  of  art.8  In  the  text,  Ukeles  claims  that  the  performance  of  a 
maintenance  activity  does  not  need  to  be  enacted  in  a  gallery  or  museum 
but  can  be  undertaken  in  situ.  This  theoretical  proposition  led  Lucy 

54  JASON  WAITE 


if  --- 


% 


Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  Maintenance  Art  Tasks,  1973.  Photographic  album. 
Installation  view  next  to  an  album  containing  N.E.  Thing  Co.'s  North  American 
Time  Zone  Photo-VSTSimultaneity,  October  /<?,  igjo,  in  c.  7,500,  Walker  Art 
Center,  Minneapolis,  1973 


THE  HOUSE  OF  INVISIBLE  CARDS 


55 


Lippard  to  invite  Ukeles  to  put  the  declaration  into  practice  and  to 
participate  in  the  exhibition  c.  7,500  that  Lippard  was  curating.  Ukeles, 
began  making  an  album  of  everyday  maintenance  activities,  taking 
photographs  that  include  her  daily  maintenance  work  in  the  household 
for  Maintenance  Art  Tasks  (1973).  Each  activity  is  depicted  in  a  series  of 
photographs  in  order  to  capture  the  increments  of  time  involved.  The 
series  seeks  to  move  beyond  a  solely  symbolic  representation  so  view- 
ers can  "perceive  the  details  of  the  sequence  of  maintenance  tasks,"  a 
major  aspect  of  maintenance  that  is  "almost  impossible  to  see."1'  The 
multitude  of  images — each  activity  is  documented  with  between  twelve 
to  over  ninety  images — meticulously  depicts  the  labor  time  needed  for 
each  event,  frame  by  frame.  When  compiled  into  an  album,  the  images 
require  that  viewers  take  their  own  time  to  go  through  each  of  the 
pages.  Meanwhile,  the  series  format  replaces  the  affective  mnemonic 
of  the  snapshot  taken  at  holidays  or  on  vacations  typical  of  the  family 
album.  The  focus  is  not  on  the  growth  or  development  of  subjects  nor  on 
tracing  a  genealogy  of  the  everyday  activities.  Instead,  the  album  high- 
lights repetition  and  sameness.  Through  this  persistent  form,  a  radical 
ennui  thrusts  maintenance  into  the  realm  of  visual  culture  and  the  field 
of  the  political. 

Ukeles's  manifesto  shifts  the  discourse  of  domestic  labor  into  the 
public  sphere,  as  a  number  of  other  feminist  activists  and  authors  had 
already,  but  six  years  before  Silvia  Federici  wrote  her  influential  "Wages 
Against  Housework,"  which  advocated  for  the  recognition  of  such 
labor  as  a  "political  perspective"  which  had  the  potential  to  "produce 
a  revolution  in  our  lives  and  in  our  social  power  as  women."10  Ukeles 
is  traditionally  categorized  under  the  rubric  of  feminist  art,  and  this  is 
understandable  given  that  her  turn  toward  maintenance  was  predicated 
on  her  dual  position  as  a  young  mother  and  artist,  and  her  affiliation 
with  West-East  Bag,  a  feminist  newsletter  and  organizing  group  started 
by  Judy  Chicago,  Lucy  Lippard,  and  Miriam  Schapiro."  However,  the 
images  in  the  Tasks  album  also  eschew  certain  traditional  gender  bar- 
riers— they  document  her  husband  changing  their  baby's  diaper,  for 
instance — in  order  to  broaden  the  scope  of  what  constitutes  mainten- 
ance, and  who  performs  these  essential  tasks.  The  album  also  extends  the 
scope  of  maintenance  into  the  social  sphere  to  include  doctor's  check- 
ups, visits  to  the  barber  shop,  or  even  a  fireman  washing  his  car,  thereby 

56  JASON  WAITE 


v.. 


linking  unremunerated,  ostensibly  private  domestic  activities  with  the 
exchange  value  of  other  public  activities  and  services.  Maintenance  Art 
Tasks  dismantles  these  distinctions  and  collapses  them  into  the  single 
site  of  the  album,  a  site  which  renders  them  all  as  maintenance  activi- 
ties visible  in  the  public  sphere,  even  if  that  sphere  already  relies  on  this 
labor  without  acknowledging  it.  Ukeles  presciently  begins  to  make  this 
domestic  space  and  its  multitude  of  tasks  visible  and  open  for  examina- 
tion at  the  same  moment  that  financialization  begins. 

In  the  time  between  the  publishing  of  Ukeles's  manifesto  and  the 
production  of  her  maintenance  art  album,  the  U.S.  was  undergoing  its 
own  radical  maintenance  period,  the  aftermath  of  which  gave  rise  to 
new  forms  of  the  financial  economy.  On  a  hot  Sunday  in  August  1971, 
right  before  the  cowboy  drama  Bonanza  was  to  air,  President  Richard 
Nixon  addressed  the  nation  to  blaze  a  new  trail  for  the  economy.  His 
announcement  came  in  the  midst  of  funding  the  Vietnam  War,  rising 
unemployment,  increasing  inflation,  and  the  falling  value  of  the  U.S. 
dollar,  to  which  other  national  currencies  were  fixed  under  the  Bretton 
Woods  international  economic  system  put  in  place  after  World  War  II. 
Europe  was  tired  of  undervaluing  its  currencies  in  order  to  prop  up  the 
dollar  and  was  beginning  to  cash  in  its  large  dollar  reserves  for  gold. 
Facing  upcoming  elections,  Nixon  did  not  want  to  preside  over  the 
emptying  of  Fort  Knox  and  the  crash  of  the  dollar.  Instead  of  making 
incremental  changes,  Nixon  went  on  TV  to  announce  a  stunning  deci- 
sion: the  U.S.  would  abandon  the  gold  standard  on  which  the  dollar, 
then  the  de  facto  world  currency,  had  been  based.  The  dollar  would  no 
longer  be  convertible  into  gold  and  its  value  would  now  float  in  rela- 
tion to  other  currencies.  To  mitigate  the  potential  shock  to  the  U.S. 
economy,  socialist-style  controls  on  prices  of  commodities  and  wages 
were  imposed  for  three  months.  The  wagons  were  being  circled  into  a 
soviet  geometry  at  the  same  moment  the  new  financial  economy  was 
being  created.  This  transition  to  a  fiat  currency — the  ultimate  form  of 
deregulation — was  the  first  step  toward  the  subsequent  loosening  of 
controls  over  the  financial  system  that  would  lead  to  the  financial  crises 
at  the  end  of  the  twentieth  and  beginning  of  the  twenty-first  centuries. 
In  a  bizarre  inversion,  this  first  step  in  the  acceleration  of  free-floating 
capital  was  the  radical  act  of  instituting  price  controls,  an  attempt  to 
maintain  the  everyday  economy  and  secure  the  domestic  sphere  from 

THE  HOUSE  OF  INVISIBLE  CARDS  57 


m&    - .  3 


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price  hikes.  This  pause  that  allowed  for  the  temporary  institution  of  a 
managed  market  was  soon  abandoned  and  neoliberalism  inaugurated 
the  unfettered  global  expansion  of  finance. 

One  of  the  collateral  effects  of  financialization  is  its  unmooring 
of  capital,  allowing  it  to  circulate  ever  more  widely  across  the  globe, 
including  through  the  practice  of  offshoring.  The  setting  up  of  shell 
companies  by  individuals  or  multinational  corporations  in  tax  havens 
such  the  Cayman  Islands,  the  Bahamas,  and  Jersey  in  order  to  trans- 
fer profits  and  income  outside  of  the  reach  of  financial  regulation  and 
tax  collectors  becomes  part  of  the  "merry-go-round  of  monetary  trans- 
mission."12 The  current  total  value  of  these  accounts  is  estimated  to 
equal  about  twenty  trillion  dollars,  twice  the  total  national  wealth  of 
the  UK."  The  project  Head/ess  (2007-ongoing)  by  the  Swedish  artists 
Goldin+Senneby  attempts  to  make  this  transmission  of  capital  visible  by 
narrating,  from  multiple  perspectives,  a  search  for  an  offshore  company 
of  the  same  name  they  ostensibly  set  up.  The  duo  always  have  represen- 
tatives take  their  place:  Goldin+Senneby  "commission"  proxies  to  create 
material  for  the  project,  from  public  appearances  and  performances  to 
the  production  of  films  and  publications.  Complicit  in  this  operation 
is  an  outsourced  web  of  academics,  writers,  filmmakers,  and  viewers, 
some  of  whom  willingly  take  part,  while  others  participate  unknow- 
ingly, and  some  further  still  are  completely  fictitious.  The  project's  name 
takes  inspiration  from  a  translation  of  Acephale,  the  secret  antifascist 
organization  of  artists  and  writers  set  up  by  Georges  Bataille.  Here 
strategies  of  anonymity  and  even  mysticism  common  to  both  Acephale 
and  offshoring  create  an  uneasy  parallel  that  shifts  and  oscillates  but  is 
never  resolved.  The  absence  of  both  the  artists  and  capital  raises  issues 
of  withdrawal  and  displacement,  which  are  also  explored  in  the  book 
Looking  for  Headless.1*  Commissioned  from  the  author  John  Barlow, 
who  writes  under  the  pseudonym  K.D.,  the  novel  features  a  protagonist, 
also  named  John  Barlow,  who  describes  his  experience  searching  in  the 
Bahamas  for  the  anonymous  company.  In  the  course  of  his  investiga- 
tion, he  visits  the  offices  of  Sovereign  Trust,  a  multinational  business 
that  helps  set  up  offshore  entities  worldwide.  By  taking  the  form  of  a 
novel,  the  project  also  circulates  beyond  the  gallery  and  can  enter  the 
reader's  home,  the  domestic  sphere  which  is  ultimately  forced  to  bear 
the  extra  tax  burden  left  behind  by  the  absent  capital  being  chased  in 

58  JASON  WAITE 


Goldin+Senneby,  Headless  at  Regus,  2010.  With  Kate  Cooper  and  Richard  John 
Jones  (filmmakers).  Digital  video,  color,  sound;  28  min.  Screening  at  Broadgate 
Tower,  City  of  London,  2010 


THE  HOUSE  OF  INVISIBLE  CARDS 


59    ti;' 


the  book.  The  recent  mortgage  crisis  and  crash  of  the  housing  market 
have  further  shown  the  domestic  space  to  be  less  a  haven  from  the  mar- 
ket than  a  precarious  shelter  that  can  be  lost  to  it.  Highlighting  the  dis- 
tinction between  capital  and  labor  pointed  out  by  Bryan,  Rafferty,  and 
*  Martin,  the  project  explores  the  mechanisms  by  which  offshore  shell 

|3&  entities  cloak  the  body  of  the  capitalist  in  juridical  armor  while  exposing 

*."/"•  others  to  the  shocks  of  the  market. 

The  pervasiveness  of  financialization  has  so  embedded  itself  in  the 
domestic  sphere  that  it  is  now  situating  itself  next  to  the  quotidian  tasks 
of  washing  the  dishes  and  child  care.  In  Japan,  housewives  have  tradi- 
tionally managed  household  affairs  and  finances,  usually  investing  the 
country's  sizable  savings  in  conservative  life  insurance  policies  and  sav- 
ing bonds.  However,  a  new  phenomenon  has  taken  hold  over  the  last 
few  years  as  domestic  interest  rates  began  to  drop  and  the  household 
managers  looked  for  new  sites  of  investment."1  The  women  began  to 
trade  currency  online,  borrowing  millions  of  yen  (large  sums  of  money 
are  needed  to  turn  a  profit)  at  rates  of  2  to  3  percent  on  the  principle, 
;. .'  at  high  levels  of  leverage  and  risk  that  were  previously  available  only 

jL  to  financial  institutions.  The  money  was  traded  into  accounts  in  other 

countries  where  they  could  earn  higher  interest  and  then  carry  back  the 
difference,  hence  its  title  as  a  "carry  trade."  As  stories  of  a  few  big  earn- 
ers  began  to  circulate,  more  housewives  joined  the  boom,  and  soon  for 
many  women  day  trading  became  a  normal  activity  fitted  in  between 
tending  to  the  children  and  preparing  meals — with  some  risking  and 
losing  their  entire  life  savings  in  the  sudden  economic  downturn.'6  The 
movement  gained  notoriety  as  it  has  had  a  large  impact  on  domestic  and 
international  markets,  collectively  trading  the  equivalent  of  billions  of 
dollars  a  day  and  creating  one  of  the  largest  currency  trading  blocks  in 
the  world.'7  The  women  earned  the  nickname  "Mrs.  Watanabe"  (a  typi- 
cal Japanese  surname  literally  meaning  "cross  borders")  in  the  financial 
press  and  their  trading  activity  is  closely  monitored  by  world  markets. 
The  maintenance  of  the  domestic  sphere  here  has  become  a  site  of  spec- 
ulation with  systemic  consequences. 

Given  this  ever-increasing  financialization  of  the  domestic  sphere, 
how  can  art  contest  these  neoliberal  transformations  when  previous  sites 
of  refuge  from  capital  have  themselves  been  transformed  into  specu- 
lative instruments?  The  artists  discussed  here  take  two  very  different 

60  JASON  WAITE 


v:*"-~  ■* 


approaches  to  this  problem.  Ukeles  confronts  the  invisibility  of  labor 
and  of  affective  value  in  the  domestic  sphere  by  transforming  mainte- 
nance activities  into  art,  bringing  them  into  the  visual  and  discursive 
realm.  This  transposition  can  be  seen  as  a  political  gesture,  making  visi- 
ble labor  that  needs  to  be  revalued  and  reconsidered.  Making  public  that 
which  supports  the  public,  Ukeles  articulates  domestic  maintenance  as 
a  site  of  contestation  against  the  abstracting,  speculative  tendencies  of 
financialization.  In  the  process,  her  work  draws  attention  to  the  produc- 
tion of  affects  and  other  critical  forms  of  value  that  cannot  be  entirely 
quantified  by  the  market.  Goldin+Senneby's  project,  on  the  other  hand, 
is  immersed  in  the  tumultuous  flows  of  financial  capitalism;  by  setting 
up  their  own  offshore  company,  they  appropriate  the  instruments  of  the 
financial  economy  and  embed  their  work  in  the  circulation  of  capital. 
Highlighting  these  obscure  vehicles  instigates  a  complex  investigation 
into  the  new  movements  of  capital.  Relying  on  proxies  for  the  actual 
production  of  the  artwork  and  the  articulation  of  the  project,  this  new 
acephalian  association  exposes  their  collaborators  while  insulating  the 
artists  from  view.  Their  retreat  (back  into  the  domestic  sphere?)  posits 
new  strategies  of  authorship  while  deploying  the  instruments  of  capital 
as  a  buffer  to  renegotiate  a  distinction  between  the  public  and  private 
spheres.  When  the  International  Monetary  Fund  (IMF)  announced 
that  the  domestic  sphere — the  "household  sector"  in  their  words — is 
"'the  shock  absorber  of  last  resort,'"  the  battle  lines  over  the  effects  of 
financialization  had  been  fundamentally  redrawn.'8  Financialization 
has  enveloped  the  structure  of  the  home  and  the  everyday  maintenance 
work  taking  place  inside.  As  another  site  of  struggle,  artistic  practices 
can  help  us  to  recognize  as  essential  the  operations  that  maintain  life, 
and  thereby  articulate  forms  of  latent  value  that  confound  quantifiable 
metrics  and  resist  marketization.  Within  this  context  of  financializa- 
tion, maintenance  can  be  posited  as  a  counterhegemonic  force  that 
combats  the  totalizing  logic  of  the  financial  economy,  a  logic  that  has 
destabilized  the  domestic  sphere  and  made  it  ever  more  precarious. 


THE  HOUSE  OF  INVISIBLE  CARDS  6l 


:<i  -\ 


Notes 

i  Christian  Marazzi,  Capital  and  Language:  From  the  New  Economy  to  the 
War  Economy,  trans.  Gregory  Conti  (New  York:  Semiotext(e),  2008),  21. 

2  David  Harvey,  The  Enigma  of  Capital  and  the  Crisis  of  Capitalism  (New 
York:  Oxford  University  Press,  2010),  8. 

3  For  a  thorough  account  of  the  effects  of  financialization  on  the  eco- 
nomic recession,  see  Harvey;  and  Christian  Marazzi,  The  Violence  of  Financial 
Capitalism,  trans.  Kristina  Lebedeva  (New  York:  Semiotext(e),  2010). 

4  Many  of  these  instruments  pertain  to  households  in  the  global  North. 
However,  the  increasing  role  of  financialization  in  the  global  South  in  the 
form  of  microfinance  has  further  extended  the  access  to  capital  in  the  domestic 
sphere. 

5  "Housing  Derivatives:  Spark  of  Invention,"  The  Economist,  August  20, 
2009,  http://www.economist.com/node/14258966. 

6  Dick  Bryan,  Randy  Martin,  and  Mike  Rafferty,  "Financialization  and 
Marx:  Giving  Labor  and  Capital  a  Financial  Makeover,"  Review  of  Radical 
Political  Economics  41,  no.  458,  December  2009,  470. 

7  Jane  Pollard,  "Gendering  Capital:  Financial  Crisis,  Financialization 
and  (an  Agenda  for)  Economic  Geography,"  Progress  in  Human 
Geography,  November  26,  2012,  http://phg.sagepub.com/content/early/2012/ 
11/26/0309132512462270.^11. 

8  Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  "Manifesto  for  Maintenance  Art,  1969! 
Proposal  for  an  Exhibition,  'Care,'"  reproduced  in  this  catalogue,  pp.  118— 
121;  originally  published  in  excerpted  form  in  Jack  Burnham,  "Problems  of 
Criticism,"  Artforum,  January  1971,  41. 

9  "Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles  in  Conversation  with  Alexandra  Schwartz," 
in  Cornelia  Butler  et  al.,  From  Conceptualism  to  Feminism:  Lucy  Lippard's 
Numbers  Shows  1969-J4  (Afterall:  London,  2012),  283. 

10  Silvia  Federici,  "Wages  Against  Housework"  (1975),  in  Revolution  at 
Point  Zero:  Housework,  Reproduction  and  Feminist  Struggle  (Oakland,  CA:  PM 
Press,  2012),  15-16.  The  "Wages  for  Housework"  campaign  had  begun  earlier 
than  Federici's  essay. 

11  "Ukeles  in  Conversation  with  Alexandra  Schwartz,"  281. 

12  Nigel  Thrift,  Knowing  Capitalism  (London:  Sage,  2005),  31. 

13  "The  Missing  $20  Trillion,"  The  Economist,  February  16-22,  2013, 13. 

14  K.D.,  Looking  for  Headless  (n.p.:  Goldin+Senneby,  2008).  This  volume 
contains  only  the  first  four  chapters  of  a  projected  twelve-chapter  work. 

15  See,  for  example,  "Mrs.  Watanabe  Learns  to  Invest,"  The  Economist, 
December  16, 1999,  http://www.economist.com/node/269634. 

16  Martin  Fackler,  "Japanese  Housewives  Sweat  in  Secret  as  Markets 
Reel,"  New  York  Times,  September  16,  2007,  http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/ 
i6/business/worldbusiness/i6housewives.html. 


62  JASON  WAITE 


I 

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17  Katie  Martin,  "The  Forex  Power  of  Mrs.  Watanabe,"  Wall  Street  Journal, 
September  27,  2011,  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240529702044224 
04576594493550582376.html;  and  Ben  McLannahan,  "Mrs.  Watanabe  Brings 
Her  Money  Back  Home,"  Financial  Times,  October  3,  2011,  http://www.ft.com/ 
intl/cms/s/o/42f209b6-df8f-neo-845a-ooi44feabdco.html. 

18  International  Monetary  Fund,  Global  Financial  Stability  Report, 
April  2005,  p.  5,  available  online  at  http://www.imf.org/External/Pubs/FT/ 
GFSR/2005/oi/index.htm. 


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ARTISTS 


Michael  Bramwell,  Building  Sweeps — Harlem,  1995-96.  Inkjet  print,  14  x  11  in. 
(35.6  x  28  cm) 


\ 


MICHAEL  BRAMWELL 


Performance  artist  Michael  Bramwell  focuses  on  forgotten  systems  of 
maintenance:  his  early  work  addresses  the  seeming  invisibility  of  main- 
tenance workers  (often  minorities)  and  his  later  work  draws  attention 
to  overlooked  physical  spaces.  In  both  cases  Bramwell  engages  in  the 
maintenance  act  of  sweeping  and  in  the  process  holds  up  maintenance 
as  a  life-sustaining  practice,  one  that  opposes  the  effects  of  extreme 
entropy  in  Harlem  tenement  buildings  or  as  a  means  of  caring  for  for- 
gotten sites  of  trauma. 

Bramwell's  practice  revalues  communities  and  monuments  through 
the  maintenance  act  itself,  adding  value  to  them  by  rehabilitating  pub- 
lic spaces.  During  Building  Sweeps  (1995-96),  Bramwell  began  clean- 
ing the  public  spaces  of  the  most  neglected  tenement  buildings  that  he 
could  find,  choosing  the  buildings  based  on  the  amount  of  decay  he 
observed.  Dressed  as  a  janitor,  Bramwell  swept,  tidied,  and  washed  the 
common  spaces  of  one  tenement  building  until  gang  members  drove 
him  out.  In  response,  Bramwell  moved  his  practice  elsewhere,  seek- 
ing similarly  troubled  sites  around  the  world.  By  extending  his  work  to 
an  international  scale,  he  considers  the  shared  problem  of  how  sites  of 
traumatic  histories  are  reclaimed  and  memorialized.  He  began  to  sweep 
globally,  traveling  to  and  highlighting  sites  such  as  Tokyo  Station,  the 
central  railway  station  that  was  one  site  of  the  1995  sarin  gas  attacks,  or 
Goree  Island  off  the  coast  of  Dakar,  Senegal,  formerly  a  site  for  trading 
African  slaves. 


67 


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Michael  Bramwell,  The  Great  Sarin  Sweep,  1996.  Tokyo  Station.  Inkjet  print, 
11  x  14  in.  (28  x  35.6  cm) 


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Michael  Bramwell,  Ground  Zero  Sweeps  I— II:  Peace  Dome  Sweep,  1996.  Inkjet 
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Goldin+Senneby,  Headless:  From  the  Public  Record,  2009-10.  With  Angus  Cameron 
(economic  geographer),  K.D.  (fictional  author),  Kim  Einarsson  (curator/writer),  Anna 
Heymowska  (set  designer),  Marcus  Lindeen  (director),  Eva  Rexed  (actor).  Public  discus- 
sion with  slide  projection.  Installation  view,  Index,  Stockholm 


J$P 


COLDIN+SENNEBY 


The  collaborative  framework  of  Goldin+Senneby  (formed  2004)  has 
been  a  site  for  Simon  Goldin  and  Jakob  Senneby  to  investigate  juridical 
and  financial  forms,  specifically  the  ways  these  forms  are  constructed 
in  space  and  in  performance.  The  project  Headless  (2007-ongoing)  has 
centered  on  an  offshore  company  set  up  by  the  artists  called  Headless 
Ltd.  The  company's  name  invokes  Georges  Bataille's  notion  of  with- 
drawal as  it  was  embodied  in  his  secret  group  Acephale  (Headless). 
Goldin+Senneby  have  deployed  a  network  of  collaborators  and  proxies 
who  have  been  commissioned  to  search  for  the  company  and  to  repre- 
sent the  project  in  various  ways,  such  as  through  lectures,  performances, 
and  a  novel.  One  of  these  vessels,  Looking  for  Headless  (2010)  by  the 
artists  Kate  Cooper  and  Richard  John  Jones,  takes  the  form  of  a  docu- 
mentary film  that  aims  to  track  down  an  employee  of  Sovereign  Trust, 
a  company  that  assists  individuals  and  businesses  in  setting  up  offshore 
entities.  Through  interviews  with  academics,  private  investigators,  fic- 
tionalized characters,  and  company  representatives,  a  complex  web 
develops  in  parallel  to  the  layers  of  bureaucracy  that  shroud  Headless 
Ltd.  The  film  is  then  screened  at  Regus,  a  company  that  rents  tempo- 
rary office  space  to  offshore  companies  and  other  businesses  that  need 
a  short-term,  formal  meeting  place.  For  Maintenance  Required,  the  film 
will  be  screened  at  Regus  offices  on  Wall  Street,  bringing  the  search  to 
a  nexus  of  capital. 


71 


K.D.,  Lookingfor  Headless,  2008.  Chapters  1-4  of  a  novel  commissioned  by  Goldin+Senneby  | 


72 


Senr.e  >  Gold in+ Sen neby,  AfterMkrosoft,   CC-By-SA-2.5,  2.0,  and  1.0,  2007.  Installation  view, 
Kadist  Foundation,  Paris 


GOLDIN  +  SENNEBY 


73 


Ashley  Hunt,  Corrections,  2001.  Still  from  digital  video,  color,  sound;  57  min 


rest 


ASHLEY  HUNT 


i 

I 

Ashley  Hunt  uses  art  as  means  to  critically  engage  systems  that  privilege 
certain  populations  along  lines  of  race  and  socioeconomic  status.  Using 
video,  photography,  and  cartography,  Hunt  outlines  patterns  of  exclu- 
sion, drawing  attention  to  dynamics  of  power  that  define  social  relations 
'  in  the  United  States.  Concerned  with  the  contemporary  expansion  of 
'  the  American  prison  system,  in  1998  Hunt  began  the  ongoing  series 
Jh'e  Corrections  Documentary  Project  to  investigate  the  prison  system.  The 
video  Corrections  (2001)  is  one  part  of  the  series  of  videos,  posters,  photos, 
and  drawings.  Corrections  documents  the  increasing  privatization  of  the 
prison  system,  exposing  the  misaligned  incentives  that  drive  politicians 
and  business  professionals  to  support  a  growing,  profit-based  prison 
system  that  serves  neither  the  incarcerated  nor  the  public.  Although 
advertised  as  a  system  that  protects  vulnerable  members  of  society,  the 
growing  prison  system  has  a  darker  side.  The  system  functions  like  a 
corporation  that  encourages  the  expansion  of  incarceration  and  increas- 
ing efficiency  above  all  else — objectives  that  may  be  appropriate  in  busi- 
ness but  are  dubious,  misplaced,  and  alienating  when  applied  to  prisons 
and  public  service.  By  recording  corrections  executives  describing  the 
alleged  financial  benefits  of  increased  incarceration,  Corrections  shows 
the  nefarious  underbelly  of  a  social  maintenance  system  that  harmfully 

restructures  entire  communities. 

i'i 


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75 


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Ashley  Hunt,  Corrections,  2001.  Stills  from  digital  video,  color,  sound;  57  min. 


76 


ARTISTS 


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d  Juvenile  Prisons:  Louisiana  Case  Points  to  Abu 


rite  only  space  for  the  ft 
that  have  recently  been  imj 
try  lo  improve  education  is 
shift  shelf  on  lop  of  the 
Among  the  aging  volume: 
reporter  saw  were  "Inside  t 
Retch.''  "The  Short  Stones 
James"  and  "Heidi " 

From  their  wakeup  call 
A  M..  the  inmates,  in  white 
and  loose  green  pants,  spen 
all  their  time  confined  to 
racks-  They  leave  the  barra 
for  marching  drills,  one 
hours  a  day  of  class  and  an  < 
al  game  of  basketball  Trior 
ventilation,  and  temperai 
Louisiana's  long  summer 
permanently  In  the  90's. 

Thc  result,  several  boys  to 
tor.  is  that  some  of  them  deli 
start  trouble  in  order  to  1 
pllned  and  sent  to  the  other  s 
Tallulah  maximum-secun 
that  are  air-conditioned 

Guards  put  Inmates  in 
confinement  so  commonly 
one  week  m  May  more  thar 
ter  of  all  the  boys  spent  at  le. 
in  "lorkdown,"  said  Nancy 
other  Justice  Department 
The  average  stay  in  solitary 
six  weeks:  some  boys  arekc 


Ashley  Hunt,  Corrections,  2001.  Still  from  digital  video,  color,  sound;  57  min. 


ASHLEY  HUNT 


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Masaru  Iwai,  sketch  for  Washing  Stage,  2013.  Watercolor  and  pen  on  paper,  8  1/4  x  n  3/4 
in.  (21  x  29.9  mm) 


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MASARU IWAI 


Masaru  Iwai's  performances  and  video  installations  expose  the  precari- 
ousness  of  maintenance:  when  applied  overzealously  or  thoughtlessly, 
cleaning  can  become  an  ineffectual  or  even  destructive  act.  In  Cleaners 
High  #/  (2008)  the  artist,  in  collaboration  with  visitors  and  over  the 
course  of  the  exhibition,  cleans  a  gallery  with  water  and  various  deter- 
gents until  the  space  looks  like  it  has  fallen  into  a  state  of  disrepair. 
In  Polishing  House  (2009),  in  which  a  drywall  architectural  structure 
is  "polished"  with  power  sanders  until  it  falls  apart,  Iwai  shows  how 
maintenance  turned  into  form  and  voided  of  intention  leads  to  the  very 
destruction  it  is  supposed  to  ward  off.  More  recent  works  investigate  the 
colonial  history  of  Japan,  such  as  a  recorded  performance  in  which  two 
young  Japanese  clean  a  dilapidated  colonial-era  Japanese-style  home  in 
Taipei  with  soap  and  water,  using  a  crumpled  Japanese  flag  as  the  clean- 
ing rag. 

For  Maintenance  Required  Iwai  is  creating  a  new  performance  that 
makes  abstract  the  act  of  washing,  turning  it  into  a  performance  that 
leaves  on  the  stage's  surface  a  residue  reminiscent  of  an  abstract  paint- 
ing. This  action  both  damages  the  pristine  minimalism  of  the  stage  and 
foregrounds  the  act  of  cleaning  by  relating  its  remnants  to  another  artis- 
tic medium. 


79 


Masaru  Iwai,  Polishing  Housing,  2009.  Wood,  plasterboard,  aluminium  sash,  glass;  14  3/4 
x  23  x  17  3/8  ft.  (4.5  x  7  x  5.3  m).  Installation  views,  Monne  Porte,  Nagasaki,  Japan 


80 


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Masaru  Iwai,  Park  Cleaning  (Statue  Wash),  2010.  Performance  view,  Tokyo. 
Chromogenic  print,  46  1/16  x  36  7/8  in.  (117  x  93.6  cm) 


MASARU  IWAI 


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Yve  Laris  Cohen,  Coda,  2012.  Sprung  floor,  dancing  transsexual.  Performance    ~S, 
view,  You  Never  Look  at  Me  from  the  Place  from  Which  I  See  You,  SculptureCenter, 
Long  Island  City,  New  York,  January  15,  2012 


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YVE  LARIS  COHEN 


In  his  performance-based  work,  interdisciplinary  artist  Yve  Laris 
Cohen  engages  with  the  physical  maintenance  of  both  the  body  and  the 
exhibition  space.  Cohen's  body  performs  multiple  functions  in  his  work: 
trained  as  a  ballet  dancer  and  occasionally  employed  as  an  art  handler, 
Cohen  is  also  transgendered,  and  often  performs  shirtless  with  his  mas- 
tectomy scar  exposed.  His  body  is  often  presented  as  an  instrument 
of  grueling  endurance  and  physical  labor,  as  well  as  a  coded  symbol 
(in  certain  works,  "dancing  transsexual"  has  been  included  as  a  mate- 
rial in  the  exhibition  wall  labels).  Cohen's  performances  also  explore 
the  antagonistic  potential  that  exists  between  artist  and  architecture. 
During  his  performances,  Cohen  frequently  builds  temporary  gallery 
walls  and  "sprung"  floors  like  those  used  by  dancers,  only  to  dismantle 
them  or  violently  destroy  them  by  repeatedly  performing  upon  them 
the  acts  they  traditionally  support:  for  example,  knocking  temporary 
walls  over  and  executing  multiple  ballet  jumps  until  the  plaster  is  busted 
through  or  the  dancer  is  exhausted,  or  drilling  into  their  surfaces  hap- 
hazardly. These  worn  or  destroyed  architectural  elements  then  function 
both  as  props  in,  and  then  relics  of,  the  performance,  while  concurrently 
mimicking  and  refuting  the  familiar  formal  language  of  pristine  mini- 
mal sculpture.  Rather  than  fetishizing  the  endurance  or  maintenance 
act  per  se,  Cohen's  work  stages  the  site  of  maintenance  as  a  migratory 
area  between  the  performer-laborer's  body  and  the  site  of  performance. 
Cohen  will  develop  a  site-specific  performance  for  Maintenance  Required 
that  utilizes  the  unseen  between-spaces  in  the  Kitchen:  transitional 
zones  such  as  stairs  and  elevators,  as  well  as  the  seemingly  stagnant  but 
constantly  shifting  realm  of  art  storage  hidden  behind  the  peripheral 
walls  of  the  exhibition  space. 


83 


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1 


Yve  Laris  Cohen,  Waltz;  Cross  Hesitation,  2012.  White  wall,  white  floor,  white 
wall,  white  floor,  black  wall,  black  floor,  white  transsexual.  Performance  view, 
Thomas  Erben  Gallery,  New  York,  May  18,  2012 


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Yve  Laris  Cohen,  Duet..,  2011.  Canvas,  wood,  corn  starch,  paper,  foam,  foam 
core,  cotton,  polyester,  spandex,  vinyl,  plastic,  acrylic,  aluminum,  electricity, 
sweat,  yellow  5,  transsexual,  Thomas  von  Foerster.  Performance  view,  Fisher 
Landau  Center  for  Art,  New  York,  May  7,  2011 


YVE  LARIS  COHEN 


m: 


Sam  Lewitt,  Test  Subject  A2  Fine,  2010.  Helicopter  pilot's  helmet,  Arizona  test  dust  ISO 


12103-1  (PTI  ID:  10717F,  Batch  16,  Aug.  2010),  photomount,  adhesive  vinyl  lettering,  10 
x  11  x  10  in.  (25.4  x  27.9  x  25.4  cm) 


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SAM  LEWITT 


Sam  Lewitt  stages  the  increasingly  tenuous  and  disembodied  nature  of 
data  and  information  by  investigating  the  raw  materials  that  comprise 
data-maintenance  technologies,  including  instruments  of  data  storage 
and  transfer  such  as  printing-press  blocks,  computers,  touch-screen 
devices,  and  magnetized  credit  cards.  Lewitt  often  uses  the  familiar  but 
opaque  components  of  computers  and  touch-screen  devices  that  have 
been  stripped  of  their  function:  disemboweled  circuit  boards,  magne- 
tized mechanical  components,  engraving  acid,  or  the  ferromagnetic 
fluid  used  to  form  liquid  seals  around  drive  shafts  in  hard  disks.  By 
pointing  to  the  unstable  nature  of  these  materials,  Lewitt's  works  also 
indicate  the  inherent  instability  of  the  global  systems  upheld  by  these 
components.  He  frequently  uses  digital  techniques  and  synthetic  mater- 
ials to  give  objects  and  images  an  implicit  historical  provenance  or  a 
patina  of  nostalgia. 

In  his  Paper  Citizens  series  (2010-n),  for  example,  Lewitt  takes  high- 
definition  digital  photographs  of  individual  printing-press  blocks,  virtu- 
ally collaging  them  so  that  the  final  images  resemble  assembled  printing 
plates,  even  though  the  blocks  were  never  assembled  that  way  in  tan- 
gible space.  In  the  Test  Subjects  series  (2010),  Lewitt  coats  new,  reflective 
consumer  items  such  as  an  Ikea  mirror  and  a  helicopter  pilot's  helmet 
with  artificially  produced  "Arizona  test  dust,"  used  by  auto  manufactur- 
ers and  the  military  to  wear  down  machinery  to  the  point  of  mechanical 
breakdown  (a  label  indicating  the  dust  grade  is  affixed  to  the  plinth  on 
which  the  object  rests).  In  these  works,  both  the  items  and  their  decay 
are  ostensibly  new,  and  the  presentation  is  "dishonest";  yet  the  language 
of  degeneration  is  deployed  as  an  allegory  that  touches  on  the  produc- 
tion of  history  and  the  instrumentalization  of  the  authoritative  image. 


87,. 


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Sam  Lewitt,  Debit  Display,  2012.  Surplus  hard  drive  magnets,  read/write  spindle  compo- 
nent, demagnetized  debit  card,  35/8x7x4  in.  (9.2  x  19  x  10.2  cm) 


Sam  Lewitt,  Fluid  Employment,  2012.  Detail.  Ferromagnetic  liquid  poured  bi-weekly  over 
plastic  sheets  and  magnetic  elements,  fans;  dimensions  variable;  each  sheet,  48  x  48  in. 
(121. 9  x  121. 9  cm) 


SAM  LEWITT 


Park  McArthur,  How  to  Get  a  Wheelchair  over  Sand,  2009.  With  Ben  Fain  and  David 
Prince.  Temporary  installation  of  wood,  bamboo  mats,  concrete,  sand;  dimensions  vari- 
able. Saugatuck,  MI 


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PARK  MCARTHUR 


Park  McArthur  addresses  issues  of  dependence  and  disability  in  her 
text-  and  video-based  practice  by  playing  with  and  exposing  the  lin- 
guistic, political,  and  social  biases  that  circumscribe  the  disabled  or 
differently  abled.  As  a  disabled  individual,  McArthur  relies  on  a  col- 
lective of  people  to  care  for  her.  Helping  her  with  daily  tasks  including 
getting  out  of  bed,  getting  dressed,  and  taking  a  bath,  this  care  collec- 
tive circumvents  the  financial  hardships  created  by  relying  on  caregivers 
provided  through  the  health  insurance  system. 

Many  of  her  works,  including  a  series  of  wall  labels  made  up  of 
text  and  symbols  titled  Carried  &  Held  and  Abstraction  (both  2012-13), 
address  the  affective  relationships  among  those  in  the  collective,  the 
unequal  but  reciprocal  interpersonal  politics  they  engender,  and  the 
physical  realities  they  involve.  One  of  the  labels  names  all  of  the  indi- 
viduals who  have  ever  carried  her,  and  in  another,  all  of  the  sources  of 
financial  support  that  have  enabled  her  to  survive  and  work.  Interrupted 
by  emoticons  or  overlaid  on  a  background  of  phrases  encrypted  in  sym- 
bols, these  texts  serve  as  proxies  for  memory,  incorporating  the  same 
disruptions  and  failures  we  experience  when  remembering — often  in 
incomplete,  emotional,  or  inconsistent  ways — thereby  humanizing  what 
could  appear  to  be  a  clinical  objectification  of  her  networks  of  support. 


9i 


Park  McArthur,  It's  Sorta  Like  a  Big  Hug,  2012.  With  Tina  Zavitsanos,  Aliza  Shvarts,  and 
Amalle  Dublon.  Digital  video,  color,  silent;  17  min. 


v 


92 


ARTISTS 


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Park  McArthur,  Carried  &  Held,  2012-13.  Inkjet  print  on  museum  board,  8  x 
40  in.  (20.3  x  101.6  cm) 


PARK  MCARTHUR 


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Installation  view  of  No  Longer  Art:  Salvage  Art  Institute,  Arthur  Ross  Architecture 
Gallery,  Columbia  University,  New  York,  2012-13 


" 


SALVAGE  ART  INSTITUTE 


The  Salvage  Art  Institute  (2009-ongoing)  is  a  project  created  by  the 
artist  Elka  Krajewska  as  a  platform  to  reclaim  and  exhibit  the  unique 
afterlives  of  damaged  artworks.  Krajewska  founded  the  nonprofit  orga- 
nization after  discovering  paraworks  or  "zombie  art":  broken  or  dam- 
aged artworks  that  insurance  companies  have  taken  possession  of  after 
paying  for  the  loss  claimed  by  a  museum  or  collector.  The  works  are 
then  held  in  storage  instead  of  being  destroyed.  These  objects  are  con- 
sidered a  total  loss  but  they  continue  to  exist  in  a  state  of  limbo,  in  a 
paradoxical  state  of  zero  value  that  undercuts  the  art  market's  totalizing 
economic  valuation  of  artworks.  AXA  Insurance  has  donated  to  the 
institute  a  number  of  these  works  along  with  the  paperwork  and  corre- 
spondence that,  after  being  censored  by  the  company,  are  also  available 
for  viewing.  The  broken  objects  are  displayed  on  mobile  carts  that  can 
be  moved  around  the  space,  and  the  works  are  often  handled  by  visi- 
tors. This  renegotiation  of  the  terms  of  display  breaks  down  regimented 
exhibition  regimes  and  creates  a  different  relationship  with  these  objects 
that  have  fallen  out  of  circulation.  The  exhibition  of  these  "works"  by 
Jeff  Koons,  Jim  Dine,  and  others  raises  questions  about  their  ontological 
status  as  art  and  their  symbolic  status  within  both  a  damaged  aesthetics 
and  entropic  processes. 


95        !  4 


SAI  Policies 

1 .  SAI  is  a  haven  for  all  art  officially  declared  as  total  loss,  removed  from  art 
market  circulation,  and  liberated  from  the  obligations  of  perpetual  valuation  and 
exchangeability. 

2.  SAI  claims  stewardship  over  all  total  loss  inventories  as  they  are  declared, 
wherever  and  whenever,  with  or  without  physical  transfer. 

3.  SAI  considers  the  formal  declaration  of  total  loss  an  act  of  transformation  and 
subsequently  refers  to  the  transformed  property  as  "No  Longer  Art." 

4.  SAI  seeks  to  maintain  the  zero-value  of  No  Longer  Art  and  recognizes  its  right 
to  remain  independent  and  divorced  from  the  demands  of  future  marketability. 

5.  SAI  aspires  to  make  the  No  Longer  Art  inventory  accessible  to  the  public  view. 
SAI  provides  an  autonomous  yet  accessible  space  for  No  Longer  Art  to  reveal  its 
qualities  via  interdisciplinary  debate. 

6.  SAI  approaches  the  No  Longer  Art  inventory  through  a  non-hierarchical  sys- 
tem and  aims  at  democratic  principles.  Each  item  of  SAI  inventory  can  potentially 
deliver  equally  valid  revelations. 

7.  SAI  conceives  the  declaration  that  an  object  is  No  Longer  Art  as  the  symmetri- 
cal inversion  of  the  subjective  declaration  that  any  object  may 

be  art.  The  signature  of  the  adjuster  meets  and  cancels  the  signature  of  the 
artist. 

8.  SAI  eschews  the  aesthetics  and  sensationalism  of  damage.  Rather,  it  is 
devoted  to  examining  the  structural  implications  of  total  loss  across  art's 
conceptual,  material,  legal,  actuarial,  and  financial  identities. 

9.  SAI  is  centered  on  the  tactile  objecthood  of  No  Longer  Art,  on  its  obdurate 
survival,  and  on  its  transformed  physicality.  SAI  confronts  viewers  with  the 
material  signs  of  alteration  and  the  legible  traces  of  each  piece's  history. 

Salvage  Art  Institute,  SAI  policies,  2009-ongoing. 


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I     Salvage  Art  Institute,   Wrapped  SAI  oo/o,  materials:  oil,  linen,  size  84"  *  gf,  damage: 
j/6/2009  torn  in  transit,  claim:  8/20/2009;  total  loss:  /0/2009,  production:  2009,  artist:  Anton 
Symmf,     Henning,  title:  Interior  No.  jgi,  n.d.  Installation.  Installation  view,  No  Longer  Art:  Salvage 
Art  Institute,  Arthur  Ross  Architecture  Gallery,  Columbia  University,  New  York,  2012-13 


SALVAGE  ART  INSTITUTE 


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Karin  Sander,  Wallpiece  210  x  280,  2004.  Polished  wall  paint,  82  1/3  x  no  1/4  in.  (210  x  280 
cm).  Installation  view,  Singular  Forms  (Sometimes  Repeated),  Solomon  R.  Guggenheim 
Museum,  New  York 


KARIN  SANDER 


Karin  Sander  abstracts  from  the  processes  of  maintenance,  taking 
maintenance  techniques  and  applying  them  to  exhibition  environments 
and  objects.  Sander  makes  a  formal  argument  for  maintenance  as  art 
and  holds  up  maintenance  techniques  as  mirrors  that  reflect  and  mag- 
nify the  covert  mechanisms  and  operations  that  support  the  exhibition 
environment. 

In  her  Mailed  Painting  series  (2004-ongoing),  Sander  ships  an 
unwrapped  and  unprotected  painting  from  her  studio  to  an  initial  exhi- 
bition site  and  then  circulates  the  painting  through  global  mail  sys- 
tems. When  exhibited  afterward,  the  altered  painting  incorporates  the 
shipping  stickers  and  detritus  accumulated  on  its  surface  through  its 
travels  without  the  benefits  of  standard  art  packaging  and  crating.  In 
her  series  of  Wallpieces  (1994-ongoing),  the  wall  of  an  exhibition  space 
is  polished  until  its  surface  becomes  reflective,  formally  exploring  the 
value  of  repetition  and  duration  associated  with  maintenance  by  render- 
ing it  into  an  aestheticized  art  object.  In  an  intervention  at  the  Neue 
Berliner  Kunstverein,  holes  were  placed  in  the  floor  where  waste  bins 
had  been  located  previously,  creating  an  opening  between  the  upstairs 
offices  and  the  ground-floor  gallery  space.  Through  the  course  of  the 
exhibition,  the  institution's  waste  paper  was  allowed  to  fall  through  the 
holes  in  the  ceiling  into  the  gallery,  where  it  eventually  accumulated 
into  noticeable  piles.  Sander's  work  draws  on  both  physical  and  bureau- 
cratic maintenance  systems  entrenched  in  the  art-exhibition  complex, 
making  them  into  aestheticized,  valued  art  products  while  inverting  or 
complicating  the  normal  relationships  between  artwork,  exhibition,  and 
administration. 


99 


II 


i 


Karin  Sander,  Mailed  Paintings,  2004-2011.  Installation  view,  Curators'  Series  #4:  Studies 
for  an  Exhibition,  David  Roberts  Art  Foundation,  London,  2011 


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Karin  Sander,  Kernbohrungen  (Core  Drillings),  2011.  Waste  paper  from  five  offices  in  the 
Neuer  Berliner  Kunstverein,  five  holes  cut  through  the  floor  of  the  offices  and  the  ceiling 
of  the  exhibition  space,  each  hole  11  3/4  in.  (30  cm)  diameter 


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KARIN  SANDER 


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Taryn  Simon,  Transatlantic  Sub-Marine  Cables  Reaching  Land,  VSNL  International,  Avon, 
New  Jersey,  2007.  Chromogenic  print,  37  1/4  x  44  1/2  in.  (94.6  x  113  cm)  framed 


TARYN  SIMON 


Taryn  Simon  explores  the  relationships  between  text,  design,  and  pho- 
tographic representation  in  order  to  question  the  authority  of  these 
ostensibly  analytical  forms.  At  the  same  time,  Simon's  work  opens  up  a 
space  to  reconsider  what  is  represented  and  how  representational  forms 
change  our  understanding  of  objects,  spaces,  and  narratives. 

Simon's  photographic  series  An  American  Index  of  the  Hidden  and 
Unfamiliar  (2007)  depicts  objects  and  spaces  that,  due  to  concerns 
related  to  politics,  security,  marketing,  or  social  acceptability,  are  kept 
out  of  view  and  inaccessible.  One  seemingly  banal  image  in  the  series 
shows  two  thin  cables  running  up  the  wall  of  a  quotidian  office  space. 
These  precarious  wires  are  the  trans-Atlantic  telecommunications  cables 
that  carry  data  and  voice  traffic  between  the  U.S.  and  Europe;  the  image 
depicts  their  first  contact  with  land  in  New  Jersey.  Another  image  shows 
a  small  medical  flask  containing  "live,"  replicating  HIV  to  be  used  in 
studies  investigating  the  viability  of  fighting  the  virus  with  antibodies. 
Exposing  the  precariousness  of  systems  most  of  us  take  for  granted — 
the  telecommunications  infrastructure  or  the  medical  research  indus- 
try or  our  own  personal  biological  maintenance  systems,  especially  for 
those  who  must  contend  with  HIV  daily — these  photographs  and  their 
everyday  imagery  hint  at  the  ubiquity  and  constancy  of  maintenance. 


io3       >  & 


Taryn   Simon,  Live  HIV,  HIV  Research  Laboratory,  Harvard  Medical  School,  Boston, 
Massachusetts,  2007.  Chromogenic  print,  37  1/4  x  44  1/2  in.  (94.6  x  113  cm)  framed 


104 


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Taryn  Simon,  U.S.  Customs  Border  Protection,  Detainees,  United  States-Mexico  Border 
Control,  West  Desert  Corridor,  Arizona,  2007.  Chromogenic  print,  37 1/4  x  44  1/2  in.  (94.6  x 
113  cm)  framed 


TARYN  SIMON 


105 


-; 


Pilvi  Takala,  The  Trainee,  2008.  Installation  with  letter,  key  card,  PowerPoint  presenta- 
tion, office  furniture,  video;  dimensions  variable.  Still  from  video 

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PILVI TAKALA 


Finnish  artist  Pilvi  Takala's  practice  centers  around  acts  of  subtle  inter- 
vention. Takala  often  inserts  herself  into  closed,  specific  communities — 
a  group  of  professional  poker  players  in  Bangkok,  or  patrons  of  a 
shopping  mall  in  Berlin,  for  example — and  pushes  the  limits  of  social 
codes.  Although  she  enters  these  spaces  quietly,  her  incongruous  actions 
invariably  draw  attention  and  disrupt  given  relations,  inciting  reactions 
that  expose  the  multifaceted  network  of  societal  norms  that  govern  each 
community. 

In  The  Trainee  (2008),  Takala  turns  the  traditional  understanding 
of  work  on  its  head.  Embedding  herself  in  the  Helsinki  office  of  the 
multinational  business  services  corporation  Deloitte,  Takala  worked  as 
a  public  relations  trainee.  During  her  month-long  "training,"  Takala 
refused  the  banal  series  of  tasks  associated  with  office  work — emailing, 
photocopying,  attending  meetings — in  order  to  sit  at  an  empty  desk  and 
incessantly  ride  the  elevator.  When  prompted  by  her  curious  colleagues, 
the  artist  claims  that  she  is  engaging  in  cognitive  labor.  Takala  extends 
Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles's  practice  (see  p.  in)  by  recasting  maintenance 
activities  as  repetitive  intellectual  labor,  calling  attention  to  its  role  in 
the  business  sector.  As  a  form  of  social  commentary,  Takala  rejects 
partaking  in  any  outward  display  of  production,  questioning  the  way 
development  is  measured  at  Deloitte.  In  the  process,  Takala's  practice 
subverts  the  structures  of  corporate  development,  while  calling  into 
question  contemporary  forms  of  dematerialized  labor. 


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Pilvi  Takala,  Bag  Lady,  2006.  Still  from  slide  show  with  two  projectors  showing 
photographs  and  text;  8  min 


108 


ARTISTS 


Pilvi  Takala,  Players,  2010.  Still  from  digital  video,  color,  sound;  8  min 


PILVI  TAKALA 


109 


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Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  Touch  Sanitation,  1979-80.  Citywide  performance  with  8,500 
New  York  City  sanitation  workers 


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MIERLE  LADERMAN 
UKELES 


In  a  1969  manifesto,  Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles  defined  a  new  type  of 
artistic  practice:  "maintenance  art"  (see  pp.  118-121).  Since  then,  her 
performative  and  interdisciplinary  work  has  explored  maintenance  as 
a  creative  act.  In  her  early  work,  Ukeles  imparts  value  to  the  domestic 
activities  of  housekeeping,  childcare,  and  other  care  work.  Her  subse- 
quent work  confers  value  on  the  act  of  sanitation  and  municipal  main- 
tenance, contesting  the  social  and  class  hierarchies  in  these  systems. 
In  so  doing,  she  shows  how  maintenance  activities  are  integral  to  the 
continued  functioning  of  urban  space,  economic  and  political  discourse, 
and  other  so-called  productive  activities. 

Ukeles's  early  Maintenance  Art  Tasks  (1973)  explores  the  complexity, 
duration,  and  choreography  of  daily  maintenance  activities  by  docu- 
menting them  in  detail:  hair  cuts,  doctors  visits,  changing  diapers,  and 
washing  dishes  among  others.  The  numerous  images  of  a  single  activity 
indicate  the  extended  time  span  that  maintenance  requires.  In  Touch 
Sanitation  (1979-80),  Ukeles  shook  the  hands  of  and  personally  thanked 
all  of  the  approximately  8,500  sanitation  workers  in  the  New  York  City 
Department  of  Sanitation.  Engaging  in  public  space,  Touch  Sanitation 
humanizes  this  alienating  work  and  conveys  the  importance  of  a  tra- 
ditionally devalued  sector  of  labor.  As  the  project  progressed,  she  also 
documented  the  stories  of  these  workers  in  the  video  Sanman  Speaks 
(1979-84),  providing  a  space  for  the  workers  to  articulate  their  own  posi- 
tions and  experiences.  The  video  also  records  the  complex  and  dura- 
tional process  of  collecting  and  disposing  of  waste,  giving  a  sense  of  the 
physical  immensity  of  society's  refuse.  In  the  performance  Maintaining 
NYC  in  Crisis:  What  Keeps  NYC  Alive?  (1976),  Ukeles  reads  the  job  titles 
of  those  in  municipal  bureaucracies  threatened  by  the  city's  impending 
bankruptcy  but  necessary  to  keep  the  the  city  functioning,  a  recitation 
that  can  be  read  as  both  a  living  memorial  and  a  declarative  protest. 


Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  Touch  Sanitation  Performance:  Sweep  j,  Staten  Island,  6:00  a.m. 
Roll  Call,  1979-80.  Citywide  performance  with  8,500  New  York  City  sanitation  workers 


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Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  Interviewing  Passersby  on  the  Sidewalk  about  Their 
Maintenance  Lives,  1973-74.  Outside  A.I.R.  Gallery,  New  York.  Part  of  the 
Maintenance  Art  Performance  series 


MIERLE  LADERMAN  UKELES 


113 


Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  The  Keeping  of  the  Keys:  Maintenance  as  Security,  1973.  Three- 
hour  performance,  c.  7,500,  Wadsworth  Atheneum,  Hartford,  CT,  July  20,  1973.  Part  of 
the  Maintenance  Art  Performance  series 


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Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  Hartford  Wash:  Washing/Tracks/Maintenance:  Inside, 
1973.  Performance  view,  c.  7,500,  Wadsworth  Atheneum,  Hartford,  CT,  July 
22, 1973.  Part  of  the  Maintenance  Art  Performance  series 


MIERLE  LADERMAN  UKELES 


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IDEAS 


The  Death  Instinct  and  the  Life  Instinct: 

The  Death  Instinct:  separation,  individuality;  Avant-Garde 
par  excellence;  to  follow  one's  own  path  to  death — do  your 
own  thing,  dynamic  change. 

The  Life  Instinct:  unification;  the  eternal  return;  the 
perpetuation  and  MAINTENANCE  of  the  species;  survival 
systems  and  operations;  equilibrium. 


B.  Two  basic  systems:  Development  and  Maintenance.  The  sourball 

of  every  revolution:  after  the  revolution,  who's  going 
to  pick  up  the  garbage  on  Monday  morning? 

Development:  pure  individual  creation;  the  new;  change; 
progress;  advance;  excitement;  flight  or  fleeing. 

Maintenance:  keep  the  dust  off  the  pure  individual 
creation;  preserve  the  new;  sustain  the  change; 
protect  progress;  defend  and  prolong  the  advance; 
renew  the  excitement,  repeat  the  flight; 


..  Il8  MIERLE  LADERMAN  UKELES 

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show  your  work — show  it  again 

keep  the  contemporaryartmuseum  groovy 

keep  the  home  fires  burning 

Development  systems  are  partial  feedback  systems  with  major 

room  for  change. 
Maintenance  systems  are  direct  feedback  systems  with  little 

room  for  alteration. 


Maintenance  is  a  drag;  it  takes  all  the  fucking  time  (lit.) 
The  mind  boggles  and  chafes  at  the  boredom 
The  culture  confers  lousy  status  on  maintenance  jobs  = 
minimum  wages,  housewives  =  no  pay. 

clean  you  desk,  wash  the  dishes,  clean  the  floor, 
wash  your  clothes,  wash  your  toes,  change  the  baby's 
diaper,  finish  the  report,  correct  the  typos,  mend  the 
fence,  keep  the  customer  happy,  throw  out  the  stinking 
garbage,  watch  out  don't  put  things  in  your  nose,  what 
shall  I  wear,  I  have  no  sox,  pay  your  bills,  don't 
litter,  save  string,  wash  your  hair,  change  the  sheets, 
go  to  the  store,  I'm  out  of  perfume,  say  it  again — 
he  doesn't  understand,  seal  it  again — it  leaks,  go  to 
work,  this  art  is  dusty,  clear  the  table,  call  him  again, 
flush  the  toilet,  stay  young. 


Art: 

Everything  I  say  is  Art  is  Art.  Everything  I  do  is 
Art  is  Art.    "We  have  no  Art,  we  try  to  do  everything 
well."     (Balinese  saying) 

Avant-garde  art,  which  claims  utter  development,  is  infected 
by  strains  of  maintenance  ideas,  maintenance  activities, 
and  maintenance  materials. 

Conceptual  &  Process  art,  especially,  claim  pure  development 

and  change,  yet  employ  almost  purely  maintenance  processes. 


E.  The  exhibition  of  Maintenance  Art,  "CARE,"  would  zero  in 
on  pure  maintenance,  exhibit  it  as  contemporary  art,  and 
yield,  by  utter  opposition,  clarity  of  issues. 


MANIFESTO  FOR  MAINTENANCE  ART,  I969!  II9 


II.        THE  MAINTENANCE  ART  EXHIBITION:     "CARE" 

Three  parts:  Personal,  General,  and  Earth  Maintenance. 

A.  Part  One:  Personal 

I  am  an  artist.  I  am  a  woman.  I  am  a  wife. 
I  am  a  mother    (Random  order). 

I  do  a  hell  of  a  lot  of  washing,  cleaning,  cooking, 
renewing,  supporting,  preserving,  etc.  Also, 
(up  to  now  separately  I  "do"  Art. 

Now,  I  will  simply  do  these  maintenance  everyday  things, 
and  flush  them  up  to  consciousness,  exhibit  them,  as  Art. 
I  will  live  in  the  museum  and  I  customarily  do  at  home  with 
my  husband  and  my  baby,  for  the  duration  of  the  exhibition. 
(Right?  or  if  you  don't  want  me  around  at  night  I  would 
come  in  every  day)  and  do  all  these  things  as  public  Art 
activities:  I  will  sweep  and  wax  the  floors,  dust  everything, 
wash  the  walls  (i.e.  "floor  paintings,  dust  works,  soap- 
sculpture,  wall-paintings")  cook,  invite  people  to  eat, 
make  agglomerations  and  dispositions  of  all  functional 
refuse. 

The  exhibition  area  might  look  "empty"  of  art,  but  it  will  be 
maintained  in  full  public  view. 

MY  WORKING  WILL  BE  THE  WORK 


Part  Two:  General 

Everyone  does  a  hell  of  a  lot  of  noodling  maintenance  work.  The 
general  part  of  the  exhibition  would  consist  of  interviews  of  two  kinds. 

1.         Previous  individual  interviews,  typed  and  exhibited. 

Interviewees  come  from,  say,  50  different  classes  and  kinds 
of  occupations  that  run  a  gamut  from  maintenance  "man," 
maid,  sanitation  "man,"  mail  "man,"  union  "man,"  construction 
worker,  librarian,  grocerystore  "man,"  nurse,  doctor,  teacher, 


MIERLE  LADERMAN  UKELES 


museum  director,  baseball  player,  sales"man,"  child,  criminal, 
bank  president,  mayor,  moviestar,  artist,  etc  ,  about " 


-what  you  think  maintenance  is; 

-how  you  feel  about  spending  whatever  parts  of  your 

life  you  spend  on  maintenance  activities; 
-what  is  the  relationship  between  maintenance  and 

freedom; 

-what  is  the  relationship  between  maintenance  and 

life's  dreams 


2  Interview  Room — for  spectators  at  the  Exhibition: 

A  room  of  desks  and  chairs  where  professional  (?)  interviewers 
will  interview  the  spectators  at  the  exhibition  along  same  questions 
as  typed  interviews.  The  responses  should  be  personal. 

These  interviews  are  taped  and  replayed  throughout  the  exhibition 
area. 


Part  Three:    Earth  Maintenance 

Everyday,  containers  of  the  following  kinds  of  refuse  will  be  delivered 
to  the  Museum: 

-the  contents  of  one  sanitation  truck; 

-a  container  of  polluted  air; 

-a  container  of  polluted  Hudson  River; 

-a  container  of  ravaged  land. 

Once  at  the  exhibition,  each  container  will  be  serviced: 

purified,  de-polluted,  rehabilitated,  recycled,  and  conserved 

by  various  technical  (and  /  or  pseudo-technical)  procedures  either 
by  myself  or  scientists. 

These  servicing  procedures  are  repeated  throughout  the  duration  of  the 
exhibition. 


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Dimensions  are  in  inches,  followed 
by  centimeters;  height  precedes  width 
precedes  depth. 

Michael  Bramwell 
Building  Sweeps — Harlem: 
Worker  Portrait,  1995-96 
Inkjet  print,  14  x  n  (35.6  *  28) 
Courtesy  the  artist 

Building  Sweeps — Harlem: 
Main  Stairwell,  1995-96 
Inkjet  print,  14  x  11  (35.6  x  28) 
Courtesy  the  artist 

Building  Sweeps — Harlem: 
Mailbox  Row,  1995-96 
Inkjet  print,  11  x  14  (28  x  35.6) 
Courtesy  the  artist 

Ground  Zero  Sweeps  I— II: 
Peace  Dome  Sweep,  1996 
Inkjet  print,  14  x  n  (35.6  x  28) 
Courtesy  the  artist 

Ground  Zero  Sweeps  I— II: 
.  Collaborative  Sweep, 
Hiroshima,  1996 
Inkjet  print,  11  x  14  (28  x  35.6) 
Courtesy  the  artist 

The  Great  Temple  Sweep  II,  1996 
Performance  view,  Nagasaki 
Inkjet  print,  11  x  14  (28  x  35.6) 
Courtesy  the  artist 


The  Great  Sarin  Sweep,  1996 
Tokyo  Station 

Inkjet  print,  11  x  14  (28  x  35.6) 
Courtesy  the  artist 

Individual  Work,  Nagasaki,  1996 
Inkjet  print,  11  x  14  (28  x  35.6) 
Courtesy  the  artist 

Building  Sweeps — Poland:  Hallway 
Elevation,  1995 

Inkjet  print,  14  x  n  (35.6  x  28) 
Courtesy  the  artist 

Building  Sweeps — Poland,  1995 
Public  art  action,  Warsaw 
Inkjet  print,  14  x  u  (35.6  x  28) 
Courtesy  the  artist 

Goldin+Senneby 
Headless  at  Regus,  2010-ongoing 
Performance  and  film  screening 
with  books,  held  at  Regus  offices 
Courtesy  the  artists 

Looking/or  Headless,  2008 
With  fictional  author  K.D. 
First  four  chapters  of  a  novel, 
7x4x1/4  (17.8  x  10.2  x  .64) 
Courtesy  the  artists 

Looking/or  Headless,  2010 
With  Kate  Cooper  and  Richard 
John  Jones 

Digital  video,  color,  sound;  28  min. 
Courtesy  the  artists 


WORKS  IN  THE  EXHIBITION 


125 


Ashley  Hunt 

Corrections,  2001 

Digital  video,  color,  sound; 

59  min. 

Courtesy  the  artist 

Masaru  Iwai 
Washing  Stage,  2013 
Performance  on  stage  with 
shampoo,  body  soap,  detergent 
Courtesy  the  artist  and  Takuro 
Someya  Contemporary  Art 

Yve  Laris  Cohen 

Seth,  2013 

Performance  with  Seth  Thomas 

Courtesy  the  artist 

Sam  Lewitt 
Test  Subject  A2  Fine,  2010 
Helicopter  pilot's  helmet,  Arizona 
test  dust  ISO  12103-1  (PTI  ID: 
10717F,  Batch  16,  Aug.  2010), 
photomount,  adhesive  vinyl 
lettering,  10  x  11  x  10  (25.4  x  27.9 

x  25-4) 

Courtesy  the  artist  and  Miguel 

Abreu  Gallery 


Park  McArthur 
Carried  &  Held,  2012-13 
Inkjet  print  on  museum  board 
8  x  40  (20.3  x  101.6) 
Courtesy  the  artist 

Abstraction,  2012-13 
Inkjet  print  on  museum  board 
8  x  40  (20.3  x  101.6) 
Courtesy  the  artist 

Salvage  Art  Institute 

Not  in  Show,  SAI 0025,  material: 

oil  paint,  wood,  cardboard;  size: 

14  x  jj  1/2  x  2";  damage:  in  transit 

back  to  lender;  claim:  unknown; 

total  loss:  unknown;  production: 

igg2,  artist:  Duane  Slick,  Title: 

A  Tale  of  Two  Trees,  n.d. 

Installation 

Courtesy  the  Salvage  Art 

Institute 

Karin  Sander 
Wallpiece,  2013 
Polished  wall  paint, 
dimensions  variable 
Courtesy  the  artist 


126 


WORKS  IN  THE  EXHIBITION 


&?  ■-■'• 


Taryn  Simon 

Live  HIV,  HIV  Research 

Laboratory,  Harvard  Medical 
School,  Boston,  Massachusetts,  2007 
Chromogenic  print,  yj  1/4  x  44  1/2 
(94.6  x  113)  framed 
Courtesy  the  artist  and 
Gagosian  Gallery 

Transatlantic  Sub-Marine 
Cables  Reaching  Land,  VSNL 
International,  Avon,  New  Jersey, 
2007 

Chromogenic  print,  37  1/4  x  44  1/2 
(94.6  x  113)  framed 
Courtesy  the  artist  and 
Gagosian  Gallery 

Pilvi  Takala 

The  Trainee,  2008 
Installation  with  letter,  key 
card,  PowerPoint  presentation, 
office  furniture,  video; 
dimensions  variable 
Courtesy  the  artist  and  Carlos/ 
Ishikawa,  London 


MlERLE  LADERMAN  UkELES 

Touch  Sanitation  Performance, 

1979-80 

Thirty  color  35mm  slides 

Courtesy  Ronald  Feldman 

Fine  Arts 

Touch  Sanitation:  Sanman  Speaks, 

1979-84 

Video,  color,  sound;  58  1/2  min. 

Courtesy  Ronald  Feldman 

Fine  Arts 

Touch  Sanitation:  Waste  Flow, 

1979-84 

Video,  color,  sound;  57  1/2  min. 

Courtesy  Ronald  Feldman 

Fine  Arts 

Maintenance  Art  Tasks,  1973 
Bound  photographic  album  con- 
taining 240  photographs,  each  3  x 
4.5  (7.6  x  11. 4),  album  overall  12  x 
12  (30.5  x  30.5) 
Courtesy  Ronald  Feldman 
Fine  Arts 


Excerpted  text  from  "Manifesto 
for  Maintenance  Art,  1969! 
Proposal  for  an  Exhibition, 
'Care,'"  (1969),  Artforum,  1971 
Printed  matter,  11  x  n  (28  x  28) 

Performance  for  Maintenance 

Required,  2013 

Title  and  details  to  be  announced 


WORKS  IN  THE  EXHIBITION 


I27 


<  ;Jl" 


IMAGE  CREDITS 


p.  8  ©  Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  courtesy  Ronald  Feldman  Fine  Arts 

P.  14  courtesy  the  artist 

P.  17  courtesy  the  artist  and  Carlos/Ishikawa,  London 

p.  22  ©  Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  courtesy  Ronald  Feldman  Fine  Arts 

p.  25  ©  2013  Man  Ray  Trust  /  Artists  Rights  Society  (ARS),  NY  /  ADAGP, 

Paris;  ©  2013  Succession  Marcel  Duchamp  /  ADAGP,  Paris  /  Artists  Rights 

Society  (ARS),  New  York 

P.  38  ©  Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  courtesy  Ronald  Feldman  Fine  Arts 

P.  47  ©  Yve  Laris  Cohen,  courtesy  the  artist  and  Thomas  Erben  Gallery,  photo: 

Andreas  Vesterlund 

P.  52  courtesy  the  artists 

P.  55  ©  the  artists,  courtesy  Ronald  Feldman  Fine  Arts,  photo:  Eric  Sutherland 

for  Walker  Art  Center 

P.  59  courtesy  the  artists,  photo:  Anna  Colin 

PP.  66,  68-69  courtesy  the  artist 

PP.  70,  72-73  courtesy  the  artists 

PP.  74,  76-77  courtesy  the  artist 

pp.  78,  80-81  ©  Masaru  Iwai,  courtesy  Takuro  Someya  Contemporary  Art 

P.  82  ©  Yve  Laris  Cohen,  photo:  Jason  Mandella  ©  2012  SculptureCenter 

P.  84  ©  Yve  Laris  Cohen,  courtesy  the  artist  and  Thomas  Erben  Gallery,  photo: 

Andreas  Vesterlund 

P.  85  ©  Yve  Laris  Cohen 

p.  86  courtesy  the  artist  and  Miguel  Abreu  Gallery,  photo:  Adam  Reich 

P.  88  courtesy  the  artist  and  Miguel  Abreu  Gallery,  photo:  Jeffrey  Sturges 

P.  89  courtesy  the  artist,  Whitney  Museum  of  American  Art,  and  Miguel 

Abreu  Gallery,  photo:  Jeffrey  Sturges 

PP.  90,  92-93  courtesy  the  artist 

PP.  94,  97  courtesy  the  Salvage  Art  Institute,  photo:  Elka  Krajewska 

P.  98  photo:  Studio  Karin  Sander 

P.  101  photo:  Stefan  Alber 

p.  100  photo:  Luke  Banks 

P.  102  ©  2007  Taryn  Simon,  courtesy  Steidl/Gagosian;  the  full  title  reads: 

Transatlantic  Sub-Marine  Cables  Reaching  Land,   VSNL  International,  Avon, 

New  Jersey  /These  VSNL  sub-marine  telecommunications  cables  extend 8,037.4  miles 


J>& 


128 


.^ 


:;■:: 


arrow  the  Atlantic  Ocean.  Capable  of  transmitting  over  60  million  simultaneous  voice 
conversations,  these  underwater  fiber-optic  cables  stretch  from  Saunton  Sands  in  the 
United  Kingdom  to  the  coast  of  New  Jersey.  The  cables  run  below  ground  and  emerge 
directly  into  the  VSNL  International  headquarters,  where  signals  are  amplified  and 
split  into  distinctive  wavelengths  enabling  transatlantic  phone  calls  and  internet 
transmissions. 

P.  104  ©  2007  Taryn  Simon,  courtesy  Steidl/Gagosian;  the  full  title  reads:  Live 
HIV,  HIV  Research  Laboratory,  Harvard  Medical  School,  Boston,  Massachusetts  / 
This  flask  contains  Human  Immunodeficiency  Virus  (HIV)  that  is  infecting  human 
peripheral  blood  mononuclear  cells  and  replicating.  It  will  be  used  to  study  the  neutral- 
izing potential  of  antibodies  against  HIV,  in  both  individuals  infected  with  the  virus 
and  participants  in  vaccine  studies.  The  HIV  Vaccine  Trials  Network  was  formed 
when  the  federal  government  reorganized  its  HIV  vaccine  research  program  in  1999. 
It  is  a  division  of  the  National  Institute  of  Allergy  and  Infectious  Diseases  /  There  are 
no  documented  cases  of  anyone  infected  with  HIV  developing  sterilizing  immunity. 
More  than  42  million  people  worldwide  are  infected  with  HIV.  At  the  current  rate  of 
infection,  experts  predict  that  90  million  people  will  be  HIV  carriers  by  2010.  A  new 
infection  occurs  approximately  every  10  seconds. 

P.  105  ©  2007  Taryn  Simon,  courtesy  Steidl/Gagosian;  the  full  title  reads:  U.S. 
Customs  Border  Protection,  Detainees,  United  States-Mexico  Border  Control,  West 
Desert  Corridor,  Arizona  /  Apprehended  by  U.  S.  Customs  and  Border  Protection 
agents  on  foot  patrol  in  the  West  Desert  Corridor  near  Tucson,  Arizona,  the  four  men 
in  the  photograph  were  45  miles  from  the  Mexican  border.  They  had  been  traveling  on 
foot  for  four  days  and  had  between  them  2  liters  of 'water,  j  cans  of  tuna  fish  and $140. 
Many  individuals  who  cross  the  U.S. -Mexican  border  have  done  so  multiple  times. 
Two  of  these  four  men  claimed  to  have  homes,  family  and  employment  in  the  United 
States.  All  four  plan  to  cross  again  after  being  processed  through  the  U.  S.  Department 
of  Homeland  Security's  "voluntary  return"  program,  which  allows  non-criminal 
illegal  aliens  to  return  to  their  host  country  without  being  prosecuted.  /  The  border 
between  the  United  States  and  Mexico  is  the  most  frequently  crossed  international 
border  in  the  world,  both  legally  and  illegally.  The  West  Desert  Corridor  of  the  Sonora 
Desert,  one  of  the  largest  and  hottest  deserts  in  North  America,  is  widely  known  as  the 
corridor  of  death.  As  a  result  of  stronger  border  enforcement  in  urban  and  suburban 
areas,  more  illegal  immigrants  are  attempting  to  cross  remote  and  dangerous  areas  of 
the  Corridor. 

PP.  106, 108-109  courtesy  the  artist  and  Carlos/Ishikawa,  London 
pp.  no,  112-115  ©  Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles,  courtesy  Ronald  Feldman  Fine  Arts 

IMAGE  CREDITS  129 


ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 


Col 


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Maintenance  Required  would  not  have  been  possible  without  the  gener- 
ous contributions  and  support  of  many  friends,  colleagues,  and  advisers. 
We  extend  our  deepest  thanks  and  gratitude  to  Ron  Clark,  Director  of 
the  Whitney  Independent  Study  Program,  for  his  guidance  and  unwav- 
ering support;  Sarah  Lookofsky,  Instructor  for  Curatorial  Studies,  for 
her  direction  and  commitment  to  the  project  despite  all  of  its  monu- 
mental changes;  Okwui  Enwezor,  Cassullo  Fellow  during  the  2012-13 
academic  year,  whose  tutelage  and  critical  feedback  was  always  invalu- 
able and  well  timed;  and  Karl  Willers,  Interim  Instructor  for  Curatorial 
Studies,  for  his  incredible  generosity  and  enthusiasm  in  sustaining  the 
final  stages  of  the  process.  Their  thoughtful  counsel  and  imaginative 
input  throughout  this  project  have  been  essential  to  its  completion,  and 
their  patience  and  good  humor  have  made  it  a  pleasure.  We  would  also 
like  to  thank  the  ISP's  program  assistant,  Trista  Mallory,  for  her  orga- 
nizational and  intellectual  support  during  the  exhibition  planning  pro- 
cess. We  have  benefited  greatly  from  working  with  all  of  our  colleagues 
in  the  Independent  Study  Program  and  our  discussions  with  them  as 
well  as  their  crucial  feedback  have  been  formative  in  the  development 
of  this  project.  In  addition,  the  ongoing  seminar  discussions  that  took 
place  at  the  ISP  during  the  year  have  greatly  informed  this  curatorial 
project. 

For  their  time  and  consideration  given  to  this  project,  we  would 
like  to  thank  at  the  staff  of  the  Whitney  Museum  of  American  Art, 
including  Adam  D.  Weinberg,  Alice  Pratt  Brown  Director;  Donna  De 
Salvo,  Chief  Curator  and  Deputy  Director  for  Programs;  and  curators 
Chrissie  lies,  Christiane  Paul,  Jay  Sanders,  Elisabeth  Sussman,  Dana 
Miller,  and  Scott  Rothkopf.  Their  questions  and  comments  early  on 
in  the  process  helped  clarify  and  sharpen  many  aspects  of  the  exhibi- 
tion. We  would  also  like  to  thank  registrars  Emilie  Sullivan,  Melissa 


130 


£■ 


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Cohen,  and  Barbi  Spieler;  the  art  installation  team;  Nick  Holmes  for 
legal  advice;  and  Sarah  Hromack  and  Sarah  Meller  for  website  and 
social  media  components. 

For  making  this  catalogue  possible,  we  would  like  to  thank  Benjamin 
Young  for  his  thorough,  insightful,  and  patient  editorial  work  and  Rob 
Carmichael  for  his  inventive  design  and  exhibition  graphics. 

Our  profound  gratitude  goes  to  Marco  Nocello  at  Ronald  Feldman 
Fine  Arts  for  his  valuable  collaboration;  and  to  Tim  Griffin,  Matthew 
Lyons,  Eben  Hoffer,  Zach  Tinkelman,  and  Lumi  Tan  at  The  Kitchen 
for  their  guidance  and  logistical  support.  For  discussions  that  were 
invaluable  in  the  conceptualization  and  construction  of  the  exhibition, 
special  thanks  go  to  Benjamin  Buchloh,  Gregg  Bordowitz,  Andrea 
Fraser,  and  Chantal  Mouffe.  For  their  logistical  help  and  technical  sup- 
port, special  thanks  go  to  Eleanore  Hopper  at  Ronald  Feldman  Fine 
Arts;  Susanne  Schroeder  at  Karin  Sander's  studio;  Vanessa  Carlos  at 
Carlos/Ishikawa;  Dawn  Burns  at  the  Asian  Cultural  Council;  Anne 
Pasternak  and  Cynthia  Pringle  at  Creative  Time;  Edward  Schexnayder 
and  Miguel  Abreu  at  Miguel  Abreu  Gallery;  and  James  McKee  at 
Gagosian  Gallery.  We  would  also  like  to  thank  Joao  Enxuto,  Joshua 
Neustein,  and  Sara  Reisman.  We  also  thank  the  Finnish  Cultural 
Institute  in  New  York  and  Kol  Brun  for  providing  materials  and  techni- 
cal support  for  this  project. 

For  continued  support  of  the  Whitney  Museum  of  American  Art 
Independent  Study  Program,  we  would  like  to  thank  Margaret  Morgan 
and  Wesley  Phoa,  The  Capital  Group  Charitable  Foundation,  and 
the  Whitney  Contemporaries  and  their  annual  Art  Party  benefit. 
Endowment  support  is  provided  by  Joanne  Leonhardt  Cassullo,  the 
Dorothea  L.  Leonhardt  Fund  of  the  Communities  Foundation  of  Texas, 
the  Dorothea  L.  Leonhardt  Foundation,  and  the  Helena  Rubinstein 
Foundation.  We  are  greatly  appreciative  of  the  extraordinary  opportu- 
nity this  support  has  made  possible. 

Finally,  and  most  importantly,  we  convey  our  deepest  gratitude  to 
the  artists  and  public  program  participants.  Your  work  and  dedication 
inspire  us,  and  we  thank  you  for  your  enthusiasm,  generosity,  and  ideas 
offered  throughout  this  project. 

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS  131 


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This  catalogue  was  published  on 
the  occasion  of  the  exhibition 
Maintenance  Required,  May  30- 
June  22,  2013,  held  at  The  Kitchen, 
512  West  19th  Street,  New  York,  NY, 
curated  by  Nina  Horisaki-Christens, 
Andrea  Neustein,  Victoria  Rogers, 
and  Jason  Waite,  the  2012-13  Helena 
Rubinstein  Curatorial  Fellows  of  the 
Whitney  Museum  of  American  Art 
Independent  Study  Program. 

Support  for  the  Independent  Study 
Program  has  been  provided  by 
Margaret  Morgan  and  Wesley 
Phoa,  The  Capital  Group  Charitable 
Foundation,  and  the  Whitney 
Contemporaries  through  their  an- 
nual Art  Party  benefit.  Endowment 
support  is  provided  by  Joanne 
Leonhardt  Cassullo,  the  Dorothea  L. 
Leonhardt  Fund  of  the  Communities 
Foundation  of  Texas,  the  Dorothea 
L.  Leonhardt  Foundation,  and  the 
Helena  Rubinstein  Foundation. 

©  2013  Whitney  Museum  of 
American  Art,  New  York,  NY 

All  rights  reserved.  No  part  of  this 
publication  may  be  reproduced  or 
transmitted  in  any  form  by  any 
means,  electronic  or  mechanical, 
including  photocopying,  recording  or 
any  other  information  storage  and  re- 
trieval system,  or  otherwise  (beyond 
that  copying  permitted  by  Sections 
107  and  108  of  the  U.S.  Copyright 
Law  and  except  by  reviewers  for  the 
public  press),  without  written  per- 
mission from  the  Whitney  Museum 
of  American  Art. 


This  publication  was  produced  by  the 
Whitney  Museum  of  American  Art 
Independent  Study  Program. 

Editor:  Benjamin  Young 

Project  Managers:  Sarah  Lookofsky 

and  Benjamin  Young 

Designer:  Rob  Carmichael,  seen 

Printer:  Thomson-Shore,  Inc. 

Set  in  Adobe  Caslon 

Printed  on  Creekside  Natural, 

30%  PCR 

ISBN:  0-87427-159-2 

Printed  and  bound  in  the 
United  States 


LJJHITNEM 

Whitney  Museum  of  American  Art 
945  Madison  Ave  at  75th  St. 
New  York,  NY  10021 
whitney.org 


Printed  in  U.S.A. 


ISBN:    0A71S71S1EI 


780874"271 


591 


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